Black Box Thinking

Why Most People Never Learn from Their Mistakes - But Some Do

By: Matthew Syed

Narrated by: Simon Slater

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 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 audiobook, 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....

©2015 Matthew Syed (P)2015 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"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)

intriguing, but repetitive

Started off strong.

Excellent at showing contrast between methods and processes

Very repetitive, Could have been 1/2 as long.

Must read (listen)

Matthew Syed is using simple comparisons like aviation and health-care to talk about learning lessons

why don't all industries do this

Understand that failure leads to progress, growth, and Innovation. the book provided a strong insight into periods in history where failure was covered and then identified the antecedents that pushed for understanding and building upon failure.

Nicely crafted

The cases illustrating the principles of blame game looking backward and the learning culture going forward were very powerful. It would have been useful to look at some other fields, such as law enforcement, who are more of a mixed bag, there are investigations from within the department, but there is still very much a blame involved with litigation overseeing the process. Learning from mistakes is a fundamental principle from science. Trial and error and Fire-Aim-Shoot are other ways to state the message.

The use of detailed accounts of football (soccer) players could have been shorter without throwing in all of the team names were a little more than was necessary.

The reader's voice was trying and a little difficult to understand. But, I enjoyed the effective narrative and recommend it.

learned how to create reduce errors systematically

This is exactly what I needed to hear with imperfect humans being in the driver seat.s

very interesting mind opening book!

very muhc enjoyed the book.
Helps to explain the need as a society to be open minded and think outside of the box especially in terms of how we view a perceived failure and use it to grow

A multi-level message, well written and well read

When you begin this book, it seems as if it will be a straight comparison between the airline safety model of reviewing and learning from accidents (open) and the medical system model for covering up mistakes (closed), and it does describe few powerful illustrative examples from each of those fields. However, it turns out to have quite a few more dimensions and lessons, For example, it also turns its focus on the criminal justice system (closed) and the political system (closed). These analyses alone would make it a good book and support a strong argument that learning from mistakes is hugely important.

However, the author takes it a step further and looks at some of the psychological reasons why all of us find it so difficult to admit mistakes (cognitive dissonance), and how we so naturally create narratives that support our original decisions. Like some of the best books in this genre, the book forces us to admit that we also are subject to the same kinds of biases that make it difficult to create and maintain "open" systems that encourage us to regularly test our ideas, even while it provides one example after another of why mistakes are essential to learning.

Simon Slater is a good narrator: pace, accent, and expression contribute to an excellent audio book.

The culture we all want

This book concisely outlines the flaws in the way we react and what we need to do to progress a culture of excellence.

Fascinating, required reading!

As an anesthesiologist, the first example of this book strikes fear deep within me, about the death of a healthy young woman undergoing a routine surgery. But to able to learn from this mistake, and to apply it not only to medicine, but to the worlds of business, law, and education, allows the power of errors to be turned from things to be feared to powerful tools for improvement.

Case after case is made, showing how error (and trial & error) can be used for positive change in people and within organizations. From wrongful criminal convictions to designing vacuum cleaners, from airplane crashes to David Beckham’s penalty kicks, Syed presents a compelling argument that errors and mistakes should be embraced, and used as powerful tools for improvement. Just as evolution has turned random mutations into adaptation to environmental challenges, so should “failures” be seen as springboards for positive change.

This book is a must-read for doctors. But almost anyone can benefit from its lessons. My only complaint is that while listening to it, my mind was racing with ways to apply its lessons to my personal and professional life, and it was sometimes hard to concentrate on the book because it sparked so many ideas about how I can use its lessons to improve myself and my work.

Great narration, albeit a British one. Americans will have to translate.

much needed information for the world today. I le

Much needed information from the world today. Very Educational I learned a lot of things I had not heard of. This book has educated me on Why people think the way they think I will apply this information to my own life.