

Checklists first became common in aviation, where pilots found that minor oversights in sophisticated planes led to tragic crashes. Boeing lost a bid to provide bombers to the Army in 1935 when its "flying fortress" crashed in the test—the pilot had forgotten to unlock the tail rudder. Flying today involves formal checklists and oral confirmation among pilots, air-traffic controllers and anyone else involved in air travel.


So far, so good. But Dr. Gawande wants to make a bigger point: that formal checklists, if not exactly holding the secret to human success, will make a major difference in many other aspects of life, such as business and law: "Checklists seem able to defend everyone, even the experienced, against failure in many more tasks than we realized. They provide a kind of cognitive net. They catch mental flaws."

Here "The Checklist Manifesto" becomes less persuasive. Dr. Gawande tells the story of how Wal-Mart was heroic in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, authorizing local managers to do whatever it took to help people. One manager drove a bulldozer through her ruined store to retrieve supplies. Dr. Gawande attributes this delegation of authority to a checklist. But giving someone the authority to use her judgment means relying on individual creativity and improvisation—the opposite of a checklist. Dr. Gawande contrasts the Wal-Mart example with the centralized bureaucracy of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But bureaucracy is nothing but checklists. That's part of what's wrong with modern government—officials go through the day with their heads in a rulebook, dutifully complying with whatever the lists require instead of thinking about what makes sense.

In fact, many aspects of modern life suffer from too many checklists. Teachers, for example, are shackled to lists and protocols that prevent them from doing their jobs properly (e.g., disciplining students). Complying with the requirements of due process—a kind of legal checklist intended to protect against abuses of police power—has corroded the authority of teachers to maintain basic standards of order and respect.

The Checklist Manifesto

By Atul Gawande
Metropolitan, 209 pages, $24.50

The utility of formal protocols, according to organizational experts, varies with the nature of the activity—some activities are highly systemized, like engineering, and others dependent on the judgment and personality of the individual. Spontaneity and imagination are important in many jobs, including teaching and management of all kinds. Dr. Gawande seems to assume that formal checklists will be an unalloyed benefit. But most people can think of only one thing at once: If they're thinking about a checklist, they may not be focusing on solving the problem at hand. Many tasks require trial and error—not checklists designed to avoid error. "Hell, there ain't no rules around here," Thomas Edison famously said. "We're trying to accomplish something."

Dr. Gawande closes "The Checklist Manifesto" with the story of the crash landing on the Hudson River, in January 2009, of a US Airways plane that had lost its power in both engines. It was undoubtedly a good thing that every member of the crew had been drilled in various procedures. But the "miracle on the Hudson" happened because Capt. "Sully" Sullenberger focused on flying the plane, not a checklist on how to fly the plane. As William Langewiesche put it in his account of the incident, "Fly by Wire": "There was no time for the ditching checklist. . . . Across a lifetime of flying, Sullenberger had developed an intimacy with these machines that is difficult to convey. He did not sit in airplanes so much as put them on. He flew them in a profoundly integrated way, as an expression of himself." Capt. Sullenberger himself described the final moments this way: "The earth and the river were rushing towards us. I was judging our descent rate and our altitude visually. At that instant, I judged it was the right time. I began the flare for landing. I pulled the side-stick back, farther back, finally full aft, and held it there as we touched the water."


Mr. Howard, a lawyer, is the author of "Life Without Lawyers: Restoring Responsibility in America" (Norton).