Summary of Matthew Syed's Black Box Thinking

By IRB Media

Get the Summary of Matthew Syed's Black Box Thinking in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. Original book introduction: We all have to endure failure from time to time, whether it’s underperforming at a job interview, flunking an exam, or losing a pickup basketball game. But for people working in safety-critical industries, getting it wrong can have deadly consequences. Consider the shocking fact that preventable medical error is the third-biggest killer in the United States, causing more than 400,000 deaths every year. More people die from mistakes made by doctors and hospitals than from traffic accidents. And most of those mistakes are never made public, because of malpractice settlements with nondisclosure clauses.

For a dramatically different approach to failure, look at aviation. Every passenger aircraft in the world is equipped with an almost indestructible black box. Whenever there’s any sort of mishap, major or minor, the box is opened, the data is analyzed, and experts figure out exactly what went wrong. Then the facts are published and procedures are changed, so that the same mistakes won’t happen again. By applying this method in recent decades, the industry has created an astonishingly good safety record.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Nov 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638158523

IRB Media

With IRB books, you can get the key takeaways and analysis of a book in 15 minutes. We read every chapter, identify the key takeaways and analyze them for your convenience.

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Insights on Matthew Syed's Black Box Thinking

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Martin and his family were going to the supermarket one day, when they got separated in the parking garage. Martin never saw his wife and children again.

#2

At 8:35 a. m. , the doctors began the difficult process of putting the patient under anesthesia, paralyzing her so that they could operate on her throat.

#3

Anesthesia complications can be very serious, but they are usually due to some sort of negligence on the part of the anesthesiologist or anesthesiologists. They very rarely occur as a result of a problem with the patient.

#4

Elaine Bromiley, a mother of three, suffered a brain injury in an accident and fell into a coma. Her husband, Martin, stayed by her side every day until she died.

#5

Everywhere, people are trying to achieve success. And everywhere, people are also trying to avoid failure. But these two things are inextricably linked.

#6

Aviation is one of the safest modes of transportation, with an accident rate per million trips that is considerably lower than the average. In health care, however, this statistic is completely different, as the Institute of Medicine estimates that between 44,000 and 98,000 Americans die each year as a result of preventable medical errors.

#7

Medical errors, which can be deadly, are not caused by incompetent doctors. In fact, they follow predictable patterns that can be identified and avoided by reformers.

#8

We are quick to blame others when things go wrong, and we cover up our own mistakes in order to avoid blame. This tendency to conceal our own mistakes is evident in all walks of life, and is one of the main reasons why information and knowledge continue to be suppressed.

#9

The first step towards a high-performance revolution is to redefine our relationship with failure. We need to stop seeing it as a negative, and instead view it as a necessary part of the process of creating and innovating.

#10

We will discuss the various types of failure in detail as