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Black Box Thinking: Why Most People Never Learn from Their Mistakes--But Some Do Kindle Edition

by Matthew Syed (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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Nobody wants to fail. But in highly complex organizations, success can happen only when we confront our mistakes, learn from our own version of a black box, and create a climate where it’s safe to fail.
　
We all have to endure failure from time to time, whether it’s underperforming at a job interview, flunking an exam, or losing a pickup basketball game. But for people working in safety-critical industries, getting it wrong can have deadly consequences. Consider the shocking fact that preventable medical error is the third-biggest killer in the United States, causing more than 400,000 deaths every year. More people die from mistakes made by doctors and hospitals than from traffic accidents. And most of those mistakes are never made public, because of malpractice settlements with nondisclosure clauses.

For a dramatically different approach to failure, look at aviation. Every passenger aircraft in the world is equipped with an almost indestructible black box. Whenever there’s any sort of mishap, major or minor, the box is opened, the data is analyzed, and experts figure out exactly what went wrong. Then the facts are published and procedures are changed, so that the same mistakes won’t happen again. By applying this method in recent decades, the industry has created an astonishingly good safety record.

Few of us put lives at risk in our daily work as surgeons and pilots do, but we all have a strong interest in avoiding predictable and preventable errors. So why don’t we all embrace the aviation approach to failure rather than the health-care approach? As Matthew Syed shows in this eye-opening book, the answer is rooted in human psychology and organizational culture.

Syed argues that the most important determinant of success in any field is an acknowledgment of failure and a willingness to engage with it. Yet most of us are stuck in a relationship with failure that impedes progress, halts innovation, and damages our careers and personal lives. We rarely acknowledge or learn from failure—even though we often claim the opposite. We think we have 20/20 hindsight, but our vision is usually fuzzy.

Syed draws on a wide range of sources—from anthropology and psychology to history and complexity theory—to explore the subtle but predictable patterns of human error and our defensive responses to error. He also shares fascinating stories of individuals and organizations that have successfully embraced a black box approach to improvement, such as David Beckham, the Mercedes F1 team, and Dropbox.

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325 pages
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English
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Portfolio
Publication date

November 3, 2015
File size

2446 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for Black Box Thinking

"Mathew Syed has issued a stirring call to redefine failure. Failure shouldn’t be shameful and stigmatizing, he explains. Instead, he shows that failure can be exciting and enlightening — an essential ingredient in any recipe for success. Full of well-crafted stories and keenly deployed scientific insights, Black Box Thinking will forever change the way you think about screwing up."
—DANIEL PINK, author of Drive and To Sell Is Human

Praise for Bounce

"Insightful and entertaining"
—DAN ARIELY, author of Predictably Irrational

"The most important book I’ve read over the past six months."
—PETER ORSZAG, economist, in The New York Times

"A fascinating subject and Syed is a dazzling writer."
—OWEN SLOT, The Times London

"Everything Mathew Syed Writes is worth reading."
—LYNN TRUSS, bestselling author of Eat, Shoots & Leaves

About the Author

Matthew Syed is a columnist and feature writer for The Times of Londonand frequently contributes to the BBC as a radio and television commentator. His previous book, Bounce, was an international bestseller. He has won numerous awards for his journalism and is an in-demand public speaker for organizations such as Goldman Sachs, BP, Rolls-Royce, and Oxford University. He lives in London.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00SI0B8XC
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Portfolio; 1st edition (November 3, 2015)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 3, 2015
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2446 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 325 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #181,019 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #147 in Business Management (Kindle Store)
- #345 in Personal Success in Business
- #1,391 in Business Processes & Infrastructure

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Matthew Syed

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Matthew Syed is one of the world’s most influential thinkers in the field of high performance in the context of a complex and fast-changing world.

He draws on a vast array of case studies and real-world examples across sport, business, education and politics. Matthew looks at the inside story of how success really happens – and how we cannot grow unless we are prepared to learn from our mistakes. In his latest book, You Are Awesome, Matthew distils the principles of growth mindset, resilience and adaptability in his other books for a younger audience.

In his previous career, Matthew was the former England table tennis number one for almost a decade. Nowadays Matthew is a multi-award-winning journalist for The Times, a highly-acclaimed speaker, and a regular contributor to radio and television. He is the author of three bestselling books on the subject of mindset and high performance – Bounce, Black Box Thinking and The Greatest. Matthew’s fourth book is planned for publication in 2019, following his children’s book, You Are Awesome, which is available to order now.

Matthew lives in London with his wife and two children. To find out more about Matthew’s work, visit: www.matthewsyed.co.uk.

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Philip Metz

Group Review by Gregory Jackey, Janene Heinzman, Kyle Carufe, Michael Claudio, Devin Demirpolat, Anthony Hunter, and Philip Metz

Reviewed in the United States on October 9, 2017

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Failure – most of society looks down upon it. Throughout history, it has been viewed as a sign of weakness or incompetence. No one likes to fail but it happens countless times throughout our lives. Even more, we hate to admit our failures especially when dealing with important tasks or have great responsibilities. We often internalize our failures afraid that our peers or society will think less of us, it can become detrimental to our self-confidence, and the driving force in making decisions. But does it have to be this way? What if we could channel these feelings and emotions? What if we could use the errors or mistakes (failures) to better our future self and others?

Throughout “Black Box Thinking”, Matthew Syed creates an enlightening experience by backing up the theory with a series of real-life stories and accounts. The intended goal is for the reader to understand that current definitions and judgments of failure do not allow us to achieve our full potential. Syed emphasizes to the reader, to grasp the idea that we have the capacity to make the difference by embracing our failures. As Heather Hanbury, headmistress of Wimbledon High School, stated in the text, “You’re not born with fear of failure, it’s not an instinct, it’s something that grows and develops as you get older”. We must work diligently to change the manner with which failure is processed and handled. Only then will we realize the massive potential for growth as a society, and that we should no longer fear mistakes because “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently”.

Syed presents a different perspective regarding failure. Not only should we acknowledge it, Syed says, we should take responsibility for it and use mistakes and failures as tools for improvement, rather than attempt to cover them up or hide from them. Syed, stresses that we must reshape the way we think about failure, not just personally, but also on organizational and societal levels; to systematically turn negatives into positives. Rather than being focused on avoiding mistakes, Syed details how to analyze the situation and develop insights to ensure that similar mistakes are not repeated. More importantly, Syed does not merely state what we are currently doing wrong versus what we should be doing, he provides a breadth of detailed examples to illustrate his points.

Syed refers to the ideology of addressing failure as, “Black Box Thinking”. Throughout his compelling and captivating analysis, Syed refers to the airline industry as the antithesis of Black Box Thinking and contrasts it to the medical industry and the criminal justice system. He uses references to black box data recorders on aircrafts as not only enabling the industry to learn causes of crashes and malfunctions but also facilitate amendments to past protocols and procedures. Then contrasts this process with medicine and criminal justice often not taking ownership of mistakes, calling them “one-offs” or an anomaly, never admitting to the failure. Syed refers to this phenomenon as cognitive dissonance and therefore
never investigating the failed procedures or oversites. The author also directs the reader’s attention to how admitting failure, examination of the cause, and conducting Randomized Control Trials (RTCs) can result in changing industry perception resulting in an outstanding safety record. Syed furthers the reader’s understanding with discussions explaining how businesses, governments, and institutions address failures but do not take responsibility. Essentially, stressing the crucial part of establishing a beneficial relationship with mistakes is largely ignored.

5 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

A must for the business owner library

Reviewed in the United States on March 22, 2017

Verified Purchase

Such a great book about the value of analyzing and learning from yours and others mistakes . Clear and concise with great examples of individuals, countries and industries who used the valuable lesions learned in the making of a mistake to be infinitely better in the future . In a nutshell the author suggests mistakes are part of life , nothing is ever learned in their cover up , plenty is learned in their dissection. Mistakes are in fact a healthy part of human and organizational development and to some degree ( when not life threating ) should be embraced .
I will re-read many times I'm sure .

One person found this helpful

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alex boody

Why making mistakes and failing is actually a good thing, if done properly.

Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2018

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How should you open your book on failure? Matthew Syed felt on should examine two heart-wrenching stories with similar initial outcomes yet with vastly different responses. A healthy 37-year-old wife and mother of two goes in for a seemingly routine surgery and a typical flight from New York City, NY to Portland, OR. Both cases go, at least to those in charge during the events, inexplicably wrong incredibly fast. The mother dies and the plane crashes; but it is not what happened during these events that matters most according to Syed, it is what happens after. How you respond to those mistakes and learn from them, or don’t can be the difference between future success and failure. Syed chose these two cases for several reasons most notably the divergent responses to their failure. Aviation has pioneered the process of learning from failures and healthcare failures are not typically examined willingly. A “black box,” which is actually orange for those that don’t know, is usually placed in the cockpit and tail of a plane. They monitor every input into the computers onboard, track the conversation between pilot, co-pilot and engineer, and monitor every aspect of flying the plane. These boxes are near indestructible and they are orange because aviators want to find them after the worst thing possible happens, a crash. The information contained within these boxes are scoured over after a crash and researchers glean whatever inputs they are able, so the causes of the crash can be prevented in the future. The industry learns from their mistakes so that they won’t happen again.Healthcare may not be the complete antithesis of Aviation, but it’s close. Doctors react to complications as “a one-off,” “it is just one of those things that can happen,” or “we did the very best we could, but it just didn’t work out.” Mistakes are covered up and not learned from. It is what Syed calls a “closed-loop.” In closed-loops there is no feedback given and thus improvements are not made. According to Syed we should avoid closed-loop situations at all costs.In Black Box Thinking: Why Most People Never Learn From their Mistakes—but Some Do Syed dissects why some companies, individuals, or industries succeed and why others fail. Syed weaves the central theme throughout each chapter with topics ranging from how the Scared Straight system actually created more future criminals than prevented, what caused one UK coach to break the Tour de France curse for British cyclists, or how David Beckham became world class at free kicks. Syed analyzes the psychology behind our fear of admitting mistakes and shows the reader why this is such a bad thing. He then demonstrates how successful companies and individuals are built on failures, more importantly learning from the failures they make. While the theme is almost overbearingly present in each chapter, Syed’s case is made within the first two chapters. The storytelling is captive and enjoyable, however reading felt as if you were being nagged by your mother about eating your vegetables. You know you should, but you’ve heard it a dozen times before. By the end of this book that is how you will feel about learning from failures. It is important, you should learn how to do so, but you’ve heard it a dozen times already. Black Box is an enjoyable read with interesting stories and people, but you won’t come away with a how-to on learning from your mistakes. You’ll just know you should.

26 people found this helpful

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