John Murray Publishers Ltd Black Box Thinking: Marginal Gains and the Secrets of High Performance

Great insights. Loved it.

Great book, provides a different perspective. Fast delivery. I read it in 2 days and constantly refer back to it.

Ve not finished my journey with the master program but it deserves four star

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.

What a book! Congrats to the author for this fascinating book. From my point of view, many approaches explained in the book are really mind-changing.

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Management book that mostly revolves around one's ability to confront failure and how to improve from that. Interesting use of psychology and fun case studies to make a point very relevant to business and personal life!

One of the best self improvement books I have read till date . Very well written , a completely different perspective, lot of genuine examples and a very reasonable price.