{"id":5528,"date":"2019-12-19T02:15:57","date_gmt":"2019-12-19T06:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=5528"},"modified":"2022-03-17T15:41:15","modified_gmt":"2022-03-17T19:41:15","slug":"how-to-avoid-mistakes-at-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/how-to-avoid-mistakes-at-work\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Avoid Mistakes at Work & Get More Done\u20141 Simple Tool"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Highly trained, experienced, and capable people regularly make avoidable mistakes<\/strong>. Some can be fatal. After experiencing his own mistakes and observing those of colleagues, Boston surgeon Atul Gawande set out to learn why smart people make avoidable errors and how to prevent them. This is how to avoid mistakes<\/a> at work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’ll cover why people make mistakes at work<\/a>, especially in certain professions, and how to avoid mistakes at work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Why Do I Keep Making Mistakes at Work?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The result of Gawande’s research is The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right<\/em>, in which Gawande proposes a simple solution to making mistakes at work: a checklist. This is how to avoid mistakes at work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book chronicles his exploration of the uses and benefits of checklists<\/a> in many fields, including aviation<\/a>, construction, and medicine. While not a how-to manual, his book builds the case for checklists and makes a plea for widespread adoption of checklists as a safety net for human fallibility.
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He argues that we fail to get simple things right because in numerous professions \u2014 for instance, medicine, engineering, finance, business, and government \u2014 the level and complexity of our collective knowledge has exceeded the capacity of any individual to get everything right<\/strong>. Next time you’re wondering, Why do I keep making mistakes<\/a> at work?, remember that your job is likely advancing quickly and there’s too much information for one brain to keep track of.
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Most professions, especially medicine, have traditionally responded to failure by requiring more training and experience. Training of medical personnel, police, engineers, and others is more extensive than ever. But while training and experience are important, expertise can\u2019t eliminate human fallibility. What\u2019s needed is a different strategy for preventing failure that takes advantage of knowledge and experience but also compensates for human flaws. The solution is a checklist.<\/strong> 
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Increasing Complexity <\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

To understand how easy it is to make mistakes at work, despite our ability as humans to accomplish amazing things, consider how complex medicine has become as it has advanced.
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An Israeli study several decades ago showed that the average ICU patient required 178 actions or procedures a day<\/strong>. We have a greater-than-ever chance to save someone who\u2019s seriously ill, but it requires both deciding the right treatment and ensuring that 178 tasks are done correctly each day. There\u2019s as much chance to harm a patient as to help. 
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In complex environments, checklists can help to prevent failure by addressing two problems:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Our memory and attention to detail<\/a> fail when we\u2019re distracted by more urgent matters.  <\/li>
  2. People have a tendency to skip steps even when they remember them. <\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Checklists protect against failures because they remind you of the minimum necessary steps<\/strong> by spelling them out. They allow you to verify each step while also establishing and instilling a performance standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    How to Avoid Mistakes at Work<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    In complex environments, checklists can help to prevent failure by addressing two problems. This is how to avoid mistakes at work:
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    1) Our memory and our attention to detail fail when we\u2019re distracted by more urgent matters<\/strong>. For instance, if you\u2019re a nurse, you might forget to take a patient\u2019s pulse when she\u2019s throwing up, a family member is asking questions, and you\u2019re being paged.
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    Forgetfulness and distraction are especially risky in what engineers call all-or-none processes, where if you miss one key thing, you fail at the task. For instance, if you go to the store to buy ingredients for a cake and forget to buy eggs, you can\u2019t make the recipe because it wouldn\u2019t work without eggs. The consequences are more serious if a pilot misses a step during take-off or a doctor misses the key symptom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    2)<\/strong> People have a tendency to skip steps even when they remember them<\/strong>. In complex processes, certain steps don\u2019t always matter, so people may play the odds and skip them. For instance, if measuring all four of a patient\u2019s vital signs (pulse, blood pressure, temperature, and respiration) only rarely detects a problem, you might become lax about checking everything.
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    Checklists protect against such failures because they remind you of the minimum necessary steps<\/strong> by spelling them out. They allow you to verify each step while also establishing and instilling a performance standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Saved by a Checklist<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Gawande knows that checklists are how to avoid mistakes at work. In 2007 as soon as the Safe Surgery Checklist took shape, Gawande began using it in his surgeries. Hardly a week went by without the checklist enabling the team to catch something they would have otherwise missed.
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    For instance, in one week, there were catches in five cases, including:<\/p>\n\n\n\n