Black BoxThinking

The surprising truthabout success

(and why somepeople never learnfrom their mistakes)

Introducing a powerful new bookfrom the bestselling writer and

speaker Matthew Syed.

This is the story of thesurprising truth about success.

About how some of themost innovative and

pioneering organizations inthe world are succeeding…

… and what you can learn from them.

We begin by looking at some of the greatest

succcesses in business, sportand the wider world andasking a question…

… what connects them?

AviAtion industry

What do the Mercedes Formulae teamandGoogle have in common?

What is the connection between Dave Brailsford’s Team Sky and the aviation industry?

Or inventor James Dyson andbasketball player Michael Jordan?

The answer?

?

Failure.

Or more accurately how they reacted to failure…

… learning from their mistakes andreversing their fortunes for success.

This is Black Box Thinking.

And this is what you need to knowabout successful Black Box Thinking,

in one handy guide.

1. Change a little, achieve a lot (a.k.a. Marginal Gains)

Marginal gains has become a buzz topic. But what is it?

A systematic attempt todiscover small, often

unnoticed weaknessesin one’s assumptions,and then to improveeach one of them.

Dave Brailsford noted tiny problems inbike design, aerodynamic efficiency, diet

and a host of other things.

Each marginal gain improved performance by a fraction.

The accumulation of gains was the difference betweenfinishing mid-table and winning gold.

Google conducted a series of tests to see ifchanging the colour of their web-links

could improve click-throughs.

The results recommended thatthey tweak their links to aslightly greener shade of blue.

This tiny MarginalGain is estimated tohave generated an

additional $200M inannual revenues.

2. Avoid Closed Loops

The inability to face up towhere we are going wrong, is the biggest single obstacle

to success.

Not merely for big institutions,but for individuals.

But why is itimportant toavoid closed

loops?

Detecting and adapting toerrors is nearly non-existentin the healthcare industry.

There are around 400,000 fatalitiescaused by preventable medicalerror in the United States alone.

That is the equivalent of two jumbo jets falling out of the sky every day.

Medical mistakes are oftenspun or denied, and lessonsare rarely learnt.

This is why deaths continueto occur in the same wayover and over again.

And it is not just healthcare that fallsvictim to closed loops.

A study by the University of Michigan estimates that ifprison sentences were reviewed with the same level ofcare as death sentences, there would have been ‘over28,500 exonerations in the past fifteen years’…

… rather than the 255 thathave in fact occurred.

Why? Because the criminal justicesystem doesn’t learn from its

mistakes either.

Learning from our mistakes isessential to engender success.

After all, how can weimprove if we don’t learn?

3. No blame, no shame

The fear of blame, is adangerous obstacle onthe road to success.

A report by Harvard BusinessReview found that executivesbelieve that only 2 to 5 per centof failures in their organisationswere truly blameworthy…

… but when asked how many mistakes weretreated as blameworthy the number was between 70 and 90 per cent.

This tendency to pointthe finger and demandretribution, even when acolleague was doing his orher best, obliterates thesharing of informationthat drives progress.

Successful cultures are open and honest, not closed and back-covering.

4. Try, try again

In many areas of life, we have to fail a lotbefore we come up with a good solution.

One of the most famousexamples of this comes in theform of inventor James Dyson.

Dyson worked his way through many prototypes to make his dual cyclone vacuum cleaner…

… many, many attempts…

5,127 prototypes to be exact.

To put it another way, he had to fail 5,126times before he created a world-changing success.

1. Change a little, achieve a lot (a.k.a. Marginal Gains)

2. Avoid Closed Loops

3. No blame, no shame

4. Try, try again

By applying these rules to our socialinstitutions, our political institutionsand our own lives we can build,develop and ultimately succeed.

That’s why we need more

Black BoxThinking.

‘Matthew Syed has issued a stirring call to revolutionise

how we think about success – by changing our attitude to

failure. Failure shouldn’t be shameful and stigmatising, but

exciting and enlightening. Full of well-crafted stories and

keenly deployed scientific insights, Black Box Thinking will

forever change the way you think about screwing up.’

DANIEL PINK, AUTHOR OF DRIVE & TO SELL IS HUMAN

‘Creative breakthroughs always begin with multiple

failures. This brilliant book shows how true invention lies

in the understanding and overcoming of these failures,

which we must learn to embrace.’

JAMES DYSON, DESIGNER, INVENTOR & ENTREPRENEUR

#blackboxthinkingOUT NOW