Black Box Thinking

I had many aha moments while reading this book. It made total sense. Read this book some time ago and I strongly recommend it. If you haven’t already read it, it’s called the Black Box Thinking, by Matthew Syed.

Absolutely brilliant ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Its a very intriguing book. The book actually starts with a tragedy. A real life case study of the death of a woman who went for a routine operation… touching.

Embrace failure

It explains how important it is to fail… and argues that success is learning from failure. Its narrative is that successful people are successful because they simply learn from their failures by practice and failing many times until they get it right sometimes using the marginal gains technique.

Cognitive dissonance

It analyses the healthcare industry and it’s inability to change and embrace failure as a result of cognitive dissonance. It believes that cognitive dissonance hinders the ability of clinicians to learn from failure as they tend to cover up failures and participate in the blame culture.

Who should read

In my opinion this book is a must read for clinicians and professions who wish to make changes, but don’t know how. It will reset your mindset and expose you to a different way of thinking about failure and how you can succeed.

It would be a great reading material at some point for health and social care students… at least the first chapter…. because it almost gives them the permission and confidence to challenge authority, and become the agent of change that is so needed in the NHS.

The book uses real life case studies as examples drawing from industries such as health, aviation, sports, manufacturing etc etc. As The Times says… “it will transform your entire perspective”.

Happy reading