The Checklist Manifesto · Atul Gawande · 2009
Although not directly a product development book, The Checklist Manifesto is a great read for anyone working in a team in a complex domain. It makes a compelling case for the adoption of checklists, presenting logical arguments through well-crafted stories and anecdotes.
Why checklists are needed:
- The volume and complexity of knowledge has exceeded our individual ability to deliver its benefits correctly, safely, or reliably.
- Checklists provide protection against failures, reminding us of the minimum necessary steps and making them explicit.
- Checklists establish a higher baseline of performance by helping with memory recall and getting out the minimum necessary steps.
Key lessons for designing and implementing effective checklists:
- Keep checklists simple, focusing on the most critical tasks that are often overlooked.
- Ensure the effects of the checklist are measurable and aim for widely transmissible benefits.
- Include brief team huddles to foster communication, participation, and shared responsibility.
- Use clear, unambiguous language and keep the checklist concise to avoid distractions.
- Define clear pause points for when the checklist should be used and choose an appropriate format based on the situation.
- Test and refine checklists in real-world or simulated scenarios until they work consistently.
- Recognise that checklists support expert skills rather than replace them, allowing for flexibility and judgment.
- Anticipate initial resistance but expect faster, more thorough processes and improved teamwork overall.
- Continuously revisit and refine checklists to ensure they remain helpful and relevant over time.
- Embrace the power and simplicity of checklists as a tool for managing complexity and fallibility while fostering a culture of teamwork and discipline.
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Technical Limits in Circularity for Plastic Packages
Marieke T. Brouwer et al 2022 (View Paper → )
The performance of the recycling value chain can be optimised at four stages: packaging design, collection, sorting, and recycling. This study explores the maximally achievable performance of a circular PPW (plastic packaging waste) recycling value chain, in case all stakeholders would implement the required radical improvement measures in a concerted action. The effects of the measures were modelled with material flow analysis.
We would need a huge amount of coordination and investment to achieve the optimal recycling rate of plastics of 72%. We can’t recycle our way out of the plastic problem, we have to cut back.
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Book Highlights
Although closing the alignment gap involves a process, the process is merely a way of linking together briefing and backbriefing between levels. The essence of briefing is not a process, but a skill. Stephen Bungay · The Art of Action
Noticing the details is a skill. And you develop it by slowing down, embracing tedium, and accepting that “things take the time they take,” as Burkeman puts it. Time illuminates the details. Details give way to connections. And connections are the basis of creativity, a cornerstone of copywriting. Eddie Shleyner · Very Good Copy
The bounded rationality of each actor in a system—determined by the information, incentives, disincentives, goals, stresses, and constraints impinging on that actor—may or may not lead to decisions that further the welfare of the system as a whole. If they do not, putting new actors into the same system will not improve the system’s performance. What makes a difference is redesigning the system to improve the information, incentives, disincentives, goals, stresses, and constraints that have an effect on specific actors. Donella H.Meadows · Thinking in Systems
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Quotes & Tweets
Increasingly believe that the "good, cheap, fast—choose two" maxim is devious misinformation spread by the slow. In my experience, "slow" and "expensive" usually go together. I was in a meeting yesterday where lopping a year off a project schedule also ended up reducing the cost substantially. Fundamentally, it takes time to spend, and adding the temporal constraint tends to make things simpler and more efficient. Patrick Collison
Short-term results come from intensity. Long-term results come from consistency. Shane Parrish