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Matthew Syed

Black Box Thinking: Why Most People Never Learn from Their Mistakes--But Some Do Hardcover – Illustrated, November 3, 2015

by Matthew Syed (Author)

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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.

Print length

336 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Portfolio
Publication date

November 3, 2015
Dimensions

6.31 x 1.11 x 9.38 inches
ISBN-10

1591848229
ISBN-13

978-1591848226
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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.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Portfolio; Illustrated edition (November 3, 2015)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1591848229
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1591848226
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.16 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.31 x 1.11 x 9.38 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #187,435 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,075 in Business Management (Books)
- #2,451 in Business Processes & Infrastructure
- #3,251 in Personal Finance (Books)

Customer Reviews:
3,202 ratings

About the author

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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.

Customer reviews

5 star		72%
4 star		18%
3 star		7%
2 star		3%
1 star		1%

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Top reviews from the United States

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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.

4 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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Joshua Felipe

Wonderful

Reviewed in the United States on July 30, 2020

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This is a great book.

Matthew Syed blends Karl Popper's insights into the nature of science with a deep understanding of biological evolution, along with multiple lessons drawn from human psychology, sociology, history and politics — all into a single, nagging, marvellous insight: the critical role of learning from failure; the importance of trial, error, and responsive self-improvement.

There's more here than you might think. It's a powerful idea in a modest, understated package.

It's beautifully written; humane, and full of decency in these partisan and angry times; and also full of independently interesting narratives.

One person found this helpful

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LW

LOVE this book

Reviewed in the United States on March 25, 2022

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Love this book. it is a must read for personal benefit and professionally. We need to re-think how we look at mistakes. Own them and improve vs. placing blame.

One person found this helpful

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Gadget Junkie

GREAT BOOK. HIGHLY RECOMMEND READING!

Reviewed in the United States on November 25, 2015

Verified Purchase

A colleague of mine sent me a link to a BBC article regarding this book several weeks ago. As an patented inventor and product designer I was very intrigued by the title. This is the first book I have read by this author. As I read through its pages, I found Matthew Syed's writing style to be captivating enough to keep my attention while describing events and facts which could otherwise be very dry. For that reason, I am compelled to read his other works, but merely based on the content, I have already recommended this book to dozens of people. The concept of learning from mistakes is as old as recorded history. However, if you think that is what this book is about, think again. There are many nuances to the subject matter disclosed which can be very thought provoking and enlightening. On several occasions I actually put the book down, feeling compelled to rethink dozens of situations in my own life where I have made mistakes, not learned from them and ended up repeating them, stuck in closed loop logic.
My key takeaway from reading this book is that Mr. Syed identifies a well-known flaw in humanity to which some critics at first blush might yawn and say “so what, nothing new here” Failure analysis has been around for centuries. Not exactly… this book covers a lot of ground. The Black Box failure analysis model has only been in use for a very limited amount of time in human history, yielding incredible results in aviation safety used for the benefit of all humanity. Yes, individuals throughout history have used versions of failure analysis to solve issues, either for themselves or for small scale issues. But this recent model transcends others in that it truly eliminates the need or benefit of lying, omitting information or tampering with evidence. By doing so, you only perpetuate a problem which could eventually end up costing you your life or the life of your loved ones. I spoke my friend who is a pilot and Lt. Col in the US Air Force about claims in this book and he confirmed the legitimacy and efficacy of the program, stating that US Military standards are slightly different than commercial aviation, but no doubt that you are immune to prosecution and encouraged to fully disclose information, which is solely used to improve safety for not only for the military, but for the greater good of all mankind. In my mind, that is what makes it unique.
If you were to tell a pilot in 1935 that in 2015, more pilgrims would die traveling on foot to Mecca (or being politically correct, Hajj 2015), then 3 billion passengers on commercial airplanes, travelling at 575 mph, taking off and landing in everything from thunderstorms and dense fog to snow, ice and gale force winds, sometimes even banking between skyscrapers on approach, they would have looked at you as though you were insane and told you to seek immediate psychological help. But those are the facts, made possible by human beings working together using this system and for the greater good of all.

67 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Kindle Customer

Difficult read! For one clear point

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 10, 2019

Verified Purchase

If you make a mistake don't wallow on it or make excuses, learn from failures and make improvements. Learning from failures can save lives and improve performance. Nobody is perfect but make sure to adopt a growth mindset and ensure that you learn from the imperfections. There you are save you the trouble of reading the book.

214 people found this helpful

Yas

Recommend this book to any and everyone!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 19, 2017

Verified Purchase

Loved this book from beginning to end. It has many real world examples of both sides - where mistakes are openly used for progress and where mistakes are hidden and the effects this has. A variety of industries are covered (Sports, Healthcare, Aviation, Crime etc) which really opens up the idea of marginal gains to an easily digested subject to anyone. I learned a great deal from this book as an HR Manager in a technology office but also as a Club Operations Manage in a Youth Football Club. This really applies everywhere.

I gave my daughter a long speech after reading this book as I feel its also good for resilience and not being afraid of making mistakes but embrace what you could learn from it.

Recommend this book to any and everyone!

35 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

How does this have so many good reviews?? Basic Book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 21, 2019

Verified Purchase

I thought I was in safe hands with this book because of its phenomenal reviews. Its not terrible but its just okay. Let me save you time and money - "Mistakes allow us to be more successful in the future if we learn from them. If you examine why something failed, you can use that information to change your way of thinking/doing/etc to change future outcomes from failure to success" This book is literally just example after example after example. All of which are semi-interesting stories to read - but all of which end with exactly the same summary - "See! Learn from your mistakes!". Having said that - Chap 4 was interesting in light of today's political climate - explains how and why people operate off of "alternative facts" and refuse to change their opinions even in the face of undeniable evidence.

15 people found this helpful

James Hailey

Turn attitudes of disappointment around

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 14, 2018

Verified Purchase

Mr Syed has written a book that looks at everything as a positive challenge but more importantly rejects the idea of failure correctly and considers it an opportunity for learning. Coming from a healthcare background, I found that he was spot on with attitudes, although perhaps makes less of the culture to seek judicial penalty and the effect on health professionals. Nonetheless, this is not a criticism as his well-labelled case histories amplify on the progress made as he follows each story up. It is open, honest (from those he has interviewed) and have been willing to share their experiences. There are tragedies within some of the stories that do not fail to bring an emotional tear. Any weakness in the book does little to deviate from the main thrust, and this review is not about critiquing this excellent work for its literary design, although it is well written and has an engaging style, it is just a little long in a few places. But of course, one should even consider this an opportunity. If you fail to come away persuaded to change your attitude toward your own short comings, then it is not the author's fault.

17 people found this helpful

Authur Biscuit

Well written, interesting, compelling

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 18, 2018

Verified Purchase

Very interesting book but a little frightening at the same time. (Re: medical and legal professions)
There is much in here that businesses and government should learn from. Also applicable in many ways to personal endeavours
Well written and researched, interesting, compelling. One of my 2 Best non fiction books of the last 18 months.
Highly recommended

20 people found this helpful

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