Core Requirements of Success

Last weekend I read “Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance” by Dr. Atul Gawande. Dr. Atul is a surgeon, writer and a public health researcher. He writes extremely well in that his story telling ability is one of the best and it is hard to put off the book once you start reading. 

This book was no different. The book is disturbing in parts (when you read, for example, things that go in when a death sentenced convict is killed by giving a lethal injection!), informative (how massive it is to organize a polio eradication program in a place like India), outraging (when you read about how some people manipulate insurance), numb (when to stop fighting to save a patient) and above all thought provoking (almost all the sections). While the book mainly deals with things needed for a doctor to succeed, some of the principles are universal for any job.

He lists the following three things as core requirement for success:

1. Diligence – the necessity of giving sufficient attention to detail to avoid error and prevail against obstacles
2. Do it right – making sure we minimize human failings like avarice, arrogance, insecurity, misunderstanding etc.
3. Ingenuity – The willingness to recognize failure, to learn from failure without papering over the cracks. It arises from deliberate, and even obsessive reflection on failure and a constant searching for new solutions.

I think the above three are pretty good parameters to measure our own performance and/or hold ourselves to higher standards.

I’ve read two more books from the same author and they both are exceptionally good:

• The Checklist Manifesto- How to get things right: Thru riveting stories he reveals how simple checklists can bring in striking improvements in various fields
• Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End: Here the author argues that while medicine has triumphed in modern times transforming dangers from harrowing to manageable, but when it comes to inescapable realities of aging and death, what medicine can do often runs counter to what it should. Must read for anyone having aged parents.