Black Box Thinking: The Surprising Truth About Success

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At some point, it can lead us to create or innovate things, which I thought it's something I lack(creativity). He draws on a vast array of case studies and real-world examples across sport, business, education and politics. Matthew Syed is the Sunday Times number one bestselling author of Bounce , Black Box Thinking and You Are Awesome .

When someone’s livelihood or ego is affected by the admittance of mistakes, they will avoid failure to win on the short term, neglecting long-term consequences. Smokers compensated for the lack of nicotine by smoking more cigarettes and taking longer and deeper drags. We often assemble fragments of entirely different experiences and weave them together into what seems like a coherent whole.The main idea of the book is about learning from failures and ideas might be similar with Growth Mindset by Dweck. But what I like most about this book is the later part where he emphasized that failures or mistakes are a way of improving one's own creativity.

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. To spark the imagination and take our insights to their fullest expression, we should not insulate ourselves from failure. Drawing on a LOT of examples, this book chose some particularly graphic and gruesome examples that really didn't sit well with me, and I won't repeat but just be aware this book does contain some triggering content, and I believe the authors points could have been equally highlighted with fewer examples and less graphic ones also. There was lots of moaning about doctors not learning from mistakes which is a shame as it propagates a singular, misinformed viewpoint.Syed targets health care and doctors in particular as a group who have a problematic history and culture when it comes to learning from failure. It obscures the complexity of our world, deluding us into thinking we understand our environment when we should be learning from it. He explains that any failures of the industry are due to the incentives/disincentives of the system rather than any malicious intent of individuals. Caveat: Syed is careful to acknowledge that those in the health care industry are deeply passionate about their craft and the people they serve.