"The Right Stuff" vs. Standard Work

Pretty much every lean blog in existence has commented on The Checklist, an article running in the present issue of the New Yorker.

It seems the article has sparked debate across the internet, and hit the front page of both digg and reddit. For me, the most fascinating part of the article came in a discussion of how mavericks with "rock star like status" and "expert audacity" need to give way to standardization of the delivery of care.

As an avid Hugh Laurie fan, since the days of Fry and Laurie, I'll readily admit to House fandom.
The doctor as Sherlock Holmes, using logic and obsessive-like attention to detail to save patients, appeals to an underlying idolization of the wild and brash maverick in our shared culture.

Atul Gawande relates how Chuck Yeager's era of test-pilot as hero had to give way to the more standardized, safer era of test-pilot as procedure follower. In the same way, Gawande contends, we are entering the era of Medicine delivery as science.

The practice of medicine, that romanticized notion of thousands of House-like mavericks saving lives, needs to give way to standard work.

Repeatable, quantifiable, exact standards are necessary, and in turn, save more lives.
Funny how lean concepts can work almost anywhere.