Black Box Thinking: Why Most People Never Learn from Their

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

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 itâ€™s safe to fail.
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We all have to endure failure from time to time, whether itâ€™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 thereâ€™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 wonâ€™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 donâ€™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 failureâ€”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 sourcesâ€”from anthropology and psychology to history and complexity theoryâ€”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.

Country	USA
Author	Matthew Syed
Binding	Audio CD
EAN	9781611764796
Edition	Unabridged
ISBN	1611764793
Label	Penguin Audio
Manufacturer	Penguin Audio
NumberOfItems	10
PublicationDate	2015-11-03
Publisher	Penguin Audio
ReleaseDate	2015-11-03
Studio	Penguin Audio

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

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