Black Box Thinking – Matthew Syed
One of the best books I have read and one that I reference to many people in conversations (I am entirely boring in that way) is Bounce by Matthew Syed.
By chance Simon McCarthy my Triathlon coach posted to me on Facebook to ask if I had read his latest book and I didn’t even know it had been released.
Black Box Thinking is another fantastic piece of work which in vague measure follows the train of Bounce and The Talent Myth into the examination of failure in our culture and the ‘failure paradox’ as Syed calls it that all success is entrenched in failure.
The book charts an amazing journey comparing healthcare with the aviation industry and shows how the aviation industry has a culture which embraces failure as a means of learning and becoming better whereas healthcare inevitably buries failure due to cognitive dissonance and many other factors which Syed explains beautifully in his book.
Hi examination of the psychology of failure both at an individual level and through society is fantastic and infact as a result of this book and some other stuff I have read recently we have instigated a big project in the practice which I term ‘failure management’. We will begin to fill out no-blame incident forms to the tune of about 50 a week to see if we can identify signatures or patterns in the practice which will lead to more improvement.
The book charts the history of American prisoner system, the UK judicial system, the aviation industry, healthcare and many other aspects through life where failure is either embraced or denied. It gives a good history or the David Beckham phenomenon and how he got good at football and how only by purposeful practice, learning from mistakes and being prepared to fail and fail again will you ever get better and be good at something.
Not just a book to apply to your own life but certainly one the talk to your children about.
A great Christmas present for anybody interested in that kind of stuff. A huge recommendation from me.
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