Book Review: ‘Black Box Thinking’ and rethinking personal failure
The field of mathematics attracts me like no other subject, and deciding to get a GCSE in the turmoil of last year, I attended Middlesbrough College. Due to the unforeseen Covid, the learning nearing the end of the course, had to take place remotely. I was confident that I would get at least a grade 7 as I had in my English.
Then I got the news via the website that I had in fact, only achieved a grade 5, which is a pass but I was crushed.
My wife (at the time my fiancée), and I then moved back to my home town of Plymouth when the lockdown restrictions had eased and we had received an all clear from a Covid swab.
Since then my certificate from the College has been sat in a large, boring looking envelope. The grade I received did a real number on my ego — somewhat larger than a 5 I should add.
In the February of 2020 I published my debut novel ‘Recalling Simon’. I stated to a few people around me, namely my nearest and dearest that even if I sold a mere hundred copies I would be thrilled. Since then, I’ve probably sold something in the order — now let me add this up, I only received a 5 in my GCSE in maths…ten to fifteen copies. If we add the number of copies given away in free promotions the number jumps to around 40. This I view as a tremendous failure, and yet another blow to my delicate ego.
One more example of personal failure to really cement the position I was in when I first encountered the book which is the reason for this review.
I have three pages on my Facebook. One is the normal page that everyone possesses. Another one is a pseudo-blog type of page, where I examine issues ranging from religion to neuroscience and topical science issues of the day, as well as what is going on with me. The final page is one I recently started and where I post a few brainteasers per day, almost all of which, are of my own creation. The Facebook blog, has a whopping eleven followers and my new brainteaser page has twelve. Even my Twitter on average gains almost no likes or retweets.
So social media is another area in which I fail at fairly frequently.
And yet, I’m optimistic moving forward, why? Have I perhaps, under the strain of failure, finally cracked?
To explain this apparent aberration in thought — I recently encountered the excellent and paradigm shifting — ‘Black Box Thinking: Marginal Gains and the Secrets of High Performance’ by Matthew Syed.
The book itself is broken into 6 parts each containing a certain number of chapters. The individual parts of the book deal with the subject of failure whether from the perspective of how its denial can retard progress, or how our minds rationalise away failure thus protecting the ego.
‘Black Box Thinking’ examines failure through a range of intimate insights from fields as diverse from each other as medicine and aviation. The book itself opens with an example of failure from the field of medicine, which will leave the reader with mouth wide open in astonishment.
But the book also examines the pitfalls in human psychology which render us often prey to stigmatising failure and those who commit error.
Also contained throughout the book, are examples of where failure has led to success as it invariably must do if the person who has failed employs useful changes. There is a lot to learn from chapters such as 10: ‘How failure drives innovation’. In this chapter amongst other things, Syed looks at the remarkable example of James Dyson. How his own failures led him inexorably to great successes as he overhauled the technology of vacuum cleaners. I was astounded to see that Dyson himself looks for the ability to deal with failure within any potential employees.
Thus the chapters vary in content, but keep to the overall theme of the success of failure. There are a number of colourful characters, from the already mentioned Dyson, to David Beckham, airline pilots, doctors and beyond. There are companies mentioned as profoundly influential as Google and others that exploit inevitable failure to grow into the multibillion dollar companies they have become.
Thus the content of the book drives at redefining how the reader contemplates failure. In fact Syed argues, persuasively so, that an inability to think about failure in the right way inhibits performance. Not only does this inability impair performance, it actually holds back a tide of progress. Syed demonstrates by using examples such as bloodletting in medicine which despite its dismal failure seemed to stick around much longer than it ought to have done.
What Syed demonstrates is that acknowledging failure instead of burying it away leaves the business or individual free to analyse mistakes and progress. Failure undergoes a stark metamorphosis within the mind of the reader as they pour over the pages eagerly.
Failure, dare I say it, becomes almost seductive. You didn’t read that wrong. Failure becomes a mere stepping stone to success. Whether you fail once or fifty times, each one when readily accepted can become the focus of more learning. Explicitly illustrated is this point, when Syed dives into the realm of David Beckham’s outstanding football career. While most would argue that Beckham merely had the talent to go far, what becomes clear is that this outlook does a disservice to the young Beckham. The young Beckham who diligently devoted himself to practice at all hours of the day just to keep his ball in the air. With each drop of the ball, the child Beckham inevitably learned more about control until by the age of nine he could keep the ball from hitting the ground by kicking it over two thousand times.
What one realises is that behind these apparent miraculous successes are characters who would not let themselves be defined by their failure, instead allowing it to fuel further learning.
This book rather incredibly avoids triteness, avoids anything that resembles cliché even as it deals with development both personal and from a business perspective. But Syed goes so much further, he argues that lessons should be learned from the sciences, which use failure, indeed absolutely relies upon it for progress. In this way Syed differentiates science from pseudoscientific endeavours in that the theories of science are by their very nature falsifiable. Science in nature, is stronger because of its ability to have its claims tested and falsified. Syed uses quotes from intellectual giants such as Karl Popper and Francis Bacon to drive this point home. In this way Syed moves to suggest reform for testing governmental policies through the use of RCTs (randomised control trials) to render decisions a little more scientific.
Syed then, offers so much more than a trite message on accepting failure. He moves the reader to the awareness that failure should drive a bottom-up tinkering of ideas that transform ultimate goals into singular isolated aims, that end up forming the gestalt we are after. These are the so-called marginal gains, the slight tinkering of imperfections that will guide us towards the evolutionary self-developmental goal we are striving for.
The reader who opens this book, will not only encounter a paradigm shifting perspective of failure, but will understand more fully the biases in thought which hinders them from embracing their failures and learning from them.
A profound book and one that I will and must return to time and again.
P.S Since reading this book, my GCSE maths result certificate now sits proudly upon my fireplace mantelpiece. I have also decided to run a free promotion on my debut book available as an e-book from Amazon, to ask for critical advice and feedback on where the reader feels I may have done better.
In short failure is something my ego no longer fears. Time will tell if this perspective lasts, but I’m confident that should I need to, I can return to Syed’s book and find myself renewed in my outlook once more.
10/10
