I like Matthew Syed for a few reasons, really; his podcast ‘Flintoff, Savage and the Ping Pong Guy with Robbie Savage and Andrew Flintoff was honest, insightful, and loads of fun. Secondly, for calling out Pier Morgan (in his Sunday Times newspaper column) for being a self-aggrandising, thin-skinned social media bully. And thirdly for writing his complex yet easy to understand fascinating books on human behaviour.

In his book Black Box Thinking (2015), He explores how failure is actually one of our greatest assets despite all the shame and pain associated with it. Full of practical tips on developing a healthy, productive relationship to failure, Black Box Thinking will help you change your mindset and the way you can deal with failure.

Based on the principle that aircraft have a black box, which means every mistake, can and is scrupulously investigated so that it doesn’t happen again. It’s a metaphor for life in that we can learn from our mistakes. He contrasts this with the medical world, where death can and does happen through a doctor’s misdiagnosis or poor management. However, Syed explains that due to ego and the established norms of dealing with such incidents, they do not get investigated… the opposite to what happens in the airline industry. So mistakes keep on happening, and people keep on dying.

Who’s it for?

• Psychological enthusiasts who want to know a bit more about how the mind works.
• Anyone who’s sick of making the same mistakes
• People who want to turn failure into success.

Key Ideas

• People are afraid of failure because it compromises their self-esteem.
• Failure certainly hurts, but it’s a necessary precursor to improvement.
• If you can’t admit your mistakes, then you’ll never progress.
• To learn and develop, you have to subject your theories to failure.
• Failure inspires great solutions and helps fine-tune a complicated process.
• Reaching your full potential requires embracing failure.

Summary

It’s hard to admit mistakes, but if you want to meet your full potential, then you not only have to recognise that you make mistakes but embrace them as part of your path to success. Indeed he argues that without failure, there is no progress.