Book review: Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed
A black box is an orange box (or a pair of orange boxes) sitting inside an aircraft that records instructions sent to all onboard electronic systems and cock-pit voices. In the event of a failure, like a crash, investigators could go through the black box recordings and pinpoint exactly what went wrong. Based on the findings, necessary changes are recommended to flying procedures and systems to make sure mistakes are not repeated. Over time, the number of mistakes has been reduced and flying has become safer.
In his book, BLACK BOX THINKING Matthew Syed calls this process of handling failures “Black Box Thinking”. He tries to establish, with the help of many real-life examples and anecdotes, that mistakes are not something to be embarrassed about, but rather opportunities to learn something new. This might sound very straightforward, but many factors make it difficult to put into practice.
- Ego: Failures are often linked to incompetence. So when we make a mistake, we find it hard to accept. It is impossible to learn from a mistake unless we accept the mistake.
- Cognitive Dissonance: Cognitive Dissonance is the inner tension we feel when our beliefs are challenged by evidence. It feels threatening to accept that we can be wrong sometimes. So we tend to deny, reframe or ignore the evidence and continue to think that we were right all along.
- Fixed-Mindset: People with a fixed mindset believe that their basic traits like talent and intelligence are fixed traits and can’t be improved with practice and hard work. They tend to give up easily when they fail. They see failure as evidence of their incompetence and will never try to improve.
To overcome these hurdles, we need to redefine failure. We need to think of failure as an opportunity to learn and improve ourselves instead of something to be embarrassed about. This can only be achieved by embracing a growth mindset. We should believe that our intelligence and other traits can be improved with practice and hard work. With this mindset, every mistake will become a necessary step towards ultimate success.
The book also sheds light on the benefits of the bottom-up iterative process and marginal gains. The world around us can be very complex and it is often impossible to determine all the factors that could influence a system. When we ignore these complexities, a top-down approach tends to fail. On the other hand, a bottom-up approach works iteratively, making marginal gains at each iteration. After several iterations, as a cumulative effect of all the marginal gains, the end system will work exactly as desired, despite all the associated complexities. This kind of iterative process is only possible if we are ready to accept and learn from our mistakes.
As a software developer, the book for me has established why Agile, lean-startup, and fail-fast methodologies work so well. They are built on a bottom-up iterative process.
I believe Black Box Thinking will be one of the most influential books I have read in my lifetime. The book has established a new paradigm of learning in my life. My failures, more than my successes, will shape my future. If you are like me who like to takes every opportunity to improve your character and productive value, then this book is a must read.
The book is available on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06WP3C51N/
