Black Box Thinking and Communicating Project Risk

 

Just finished an excellent book on how to rethink failure. In Matthew Syed's book, Black Box Thinking: Why Most People Never Learn from Their Mistakes - But Some Do, he explains how aviation's approach to learning from failure made flying one of the safest industries on the planet.In contrast, how medicine approaches failure has led to medical accidents being a major hazard to patients.

In aviation, accidents and errors are treated as learning opportunities. This is why the black box exists; to collect telemetric data and cockpit conversations to be used in investigations. As Syed points out, there is no stigma attached to error (unless there was clearly negligence by the flight crew) but a focus on never repeating the mistake again.

Whereas, in the medical field, error is stigmatized which encourages doctors and nurses to hide mistakes and shift blame to external events or even to the patient. Syed recounts some shocking statistics on the dangers posed by doctors and nurses refusing to learn from their mistakes.

I found Syed's chapters on cognitive dissonance to be especially useful. Some interesting ideas on how to encourage black box thinking in teams. The key is to redefine failure from something to be feared to an opportunity to grow. In fact, Syed spends a good deal of time on the merits of the growth mindset.

This is a great read for project managers on how to encourage project team members to foster a growth mindset and learn from project risks.