Black Box Thinking

Marginal Gains and the secret of High Performance – In this book, Matthew Syed tells the inside story of how success really happens and how we cannot grow unless we are prepared to learn from our mistakes with various case studies and real-world examples; the contents are broadly divided as below:

 Part 1: The Logic of Failure
 Part 2: Cognitive Dissonance
 Part3: Confronting Complexity
 Part4: Small Steps and Giant Leaps
 Part5: The Blame Game
 Part6: Creating a Growth culture

To explain them in detail:



The sad story of Martin losing his wife – because of medical error and he taking this up – ‘So that others may learn, and even more may live’.

ü Part 1: The Logic of Failure – Why mistakes happen? – Complexity, scarce resource, need to make quick decisions, procrastination and signature (particular trajectories and subtle pattern being followed). Perspective that failure is profoundly negative, something to be ashamed of in ourselves and judgemental about in others; the tendency to stigmatize errors is incorrect. Aviation learns from failure, while healthcare evades. The ‘response’ to failures make the difference. Those with tough task underestimate the time taken to complete them. The mnemonic which has been used to improve the assertiveness in aviation industry is called ‘P.A.C.E’ (Probe, Alert, Challenge, Emergency). Practice is about harnessing the benefits of leaning from failure while reducing its cost. It is better to fail in practice than on the big stage itself. It is complementary to failing in the real-world which is most threatening to our ego. While learning from failure, we need to take into account all the data, including that we cannot immediately see, to learn from adverse incidents. It is not easy, even in conceptual terms, let alone emotional terms. It takes careful thought and a willingness to pierce through the surface assumptions. Need to look beyond the obvious data to glimpse the underlying lessons. The paradox of success is that, it is built upon failure. The rule book in aviation, procedures there is because someone somewhere died. We cannot forget the lessons, and relearn later. Self-correction is a central aspect of how science progress. We can develop and build mastery with practise, not days and weeks but months and years. Until we change the way we think about failure, the ambition of high performance will remain a mirage. Stop failure denials.

When pilots make mistakes, it results in their own deaths, doctor mistake, results in the death of someone else. So, pilots are better motivated than doctors to reduce mistakes. Failure is inevitable in a complex world so learning from mistakes is so imperative. Healthcare is more complex with huge diversity, more hands on and rarely has the benefit of autopilot - all of which adds to the scope for error.


ü Part 2: Cognitive Dissonance
It is the inner tension we feel when among other things our beliefs are challenged by evidence. It is held up as a testament to the quirkiness of human psychology. People should not be punished for the crimes they didn’t commit. There is a rather obvious trade-off between two of the key objectives of the justice system: Convicting the guilty and acquitting the innocent. It is important to reduce wrongful conviction without compromising rightful convictions. There could be errors of commission or omissions. Deceptions could be external/internal/deliberate. When we think of miscarriages of justice, we often focus on the person who has been jailed for a crime he didn’t commit. But devastating is the real criminal is committing more crimes.

ü Part3: Confronting Complexity

Tendency to underestimate the complexity around us is a well- studied aspect of human psychology, and it is underpinned, in part, by the so-called narrative fallacy. We are so eager to impose patterns upon what we see, so hardwired to provide explanations, that we are capable of ‘explaining’ opposite outcomes with the same cause without noticing the inconsistency. Narrative fallacies arises inevitably from our continuous attempt to make sense of the world. The explanatory stories that people find compelling are simple, concrete, assign a larger role to talent, stupidity and intentions and focus on a few striking events that happened. Feedbacks helps. There might be no time for Masterplans, need to learn from rapid interactions too. Cognitive Dissonance helps us reframe, spin and sometimes edit our mistakes.


ü Part4: Small Steps and Giant Leaps

The approach of Marginal Gains comes from the idea that if you break down a big goal into small parts, and then improve on each of them, you will deliver a huge increase when you put them all together. Easy to comment, difficult to perform. Go out and test. You might be wrong, but it will lead to progress. Progress is not about small steps, but creative leaps. It is a matter of debate if we need to focus on bold leaps or marginal gains – Simple answer is both. Success is about developing the capacity to think big and small, to be both imaginative and disciplined, to immerse oneself in the minutiae of a problem and to stand beyond it in order to glimpse the wider vista. Innovation cannot happen without failure. The aversion to failure is the single largest obstacle to creative change.

When things go smooth, we might not have motivation to be better, to change. Challenge help us grow, be better. Eg. Relativity, masking tape, wind-up radio, ATM, Dropbox. Creativity should be thought of as a dialogue. You have to have a problem before you can have the game-changing riposte. Creativity is connecting things. The eureka moment is not the endpoint of innovation, it is the start of most fascinating stage.


ü Part5: The Blame Game

Blame is a subversion of the narrative fallacy: an oversimplification driven by biases in the human brain. It has subtle but measurable consequences, undermining our capacity to learn. Engage with the complexity of the world to learn from it. Resist the hardwired tendency to blame instantly, look deeper into factors surrounding error, create culture based on openness and honesty rather than defensiveness and back-covering. Blame often leads to what is called ‘circular firing squad’ - where everyone is blaming everyone else. It is familiar in business, politics and military; a mutual exercise in deflecting responsibility. Everyone may be sincere, but think that it is other’s fault. Blame too much and people will clam up. Blame too little and they will become sloppy. A contrast is often offered between ‘blame culture’ and ‘anything goes’ culture. Judged from deeper angle, these are not in conflict. Reconciliation of -discipline and openness lies in black box thinking. Justifiable blame does not undermine openness. ‘Just culture’. For this there needs to be Trust. There is almost no human action or decision that cannot be made to look flawed and less sensible in the misleading light of hindsight.

Overcoming the blame tendency is a defining issue in the corporate world. Ben Dattner, a psychologist and organizational consultant writes about a coworker who had stapled to his cubical, six phases of a project:

Enthusiasm
Disillusionment
Panic
Search for the guilty
Punishment of the innocent
Rewards for the uninvolved


Professionals working on the ground have crucial data to share in almost any context. So openness is not an optional extra, it is a useful cultural add-on.

Meritocracy is synonymous with forward accountability. True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.


ü Part6: Creating a Growth culture

A growth-orientated culture is not a happy-clappy, wishy-washy, we-are-all-winners approach to business or life. And it is certainly not a trope to egalitarian sensibilities. Rather it is a cutting-edge approach to organizational psychology based upon the most basic scientific principle of all: we progress fastest when we face up to failure – and learn from it.

Mindset is not quite as binary as it might sound. Success is based on a combination of talent and practice. When someone is given a new challenge, they will be less than perfect first time. Some seek feedback and improve, others are threatened by initial ‘failure’ and try never to be in the same situation again.

Failure is a means of learning, progressing and becoming more creative. Don’t deal with failure as it did not happen or blame someone else. That would be wasted opportunity. Take action to make a difference. Positive ones. At times people are prepared to go to a great extend to protect their ego and the expense of their own long-term success, this is called ‘self-handicapping’. Self-esteem can cause us to jeopardize learning if we think it might risk us looking anything less than perfect. What we really need is resilence, the capacity to face failure and to learn from it. Ultimately, that is what growth is all about.

Through seeking we learn and know things better. The first and most important issue is to create a revolution in the way we think about failure. Remember no one can possibly give us more service than by showing us what is wrong with what we think or do.