When Jack Dorsey hires a new employee at his company Square, he gives them a welcome kit. In it is a big red book, The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right by Atul Gawande.
Gawande is a doctor and writer for the New Yorker. Its premise: A simple checklist can help people manage complex situations. Gawande uses a number of examples across a variety of industries, from medicine, technology and even disaster relief to illustrate his point.
"Success metric for my work : these books disappear from my desk. (you should read it too)," Dorsey tweeted in April.
He particularly likes this passage about venture capitalists choosing which startups to invest in. He quotes it on his Tumblr:
Smart specifically studied how such people made their most difficult decision in judging whether to give money to an entrepreneur or not. You would think that this would be whether the entrepreneur’s idea is actually a good one. But finding an idea is apparently not all that hard. Finding an entrepreneur who can execute a good idea is a different matter entirely. One needs a person who can take an idea from proposal to reality, work the long hours, build a team, handle the pressures and setbacks, manage technical and people problems alike, and stick with the effort for years on end without getting distracted or going insane. Such people are rare and extremely hard to spot.
- Atul Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto