A Joosr Guide to… Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed

we have years of experience or a high level of education, we tend to have elevated expectations of our performance and often demand perfection from ourselves.

I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

Thinking about Beckham as a player, most people focus on the exceptional goals he scored. However, when he himself reflects on his abilities, he thinks about all of the times he failed to get the ball in the net: “I took a ton of misses before I got it right.”

Expecting perfection only escalates the problem.

Typically people brush failures aside and swiftly move on from them. However, if we invest the resources to find out why mistakes are made and how we can correct them, we’ll be in a position to save time, money, and in some instances lives.

If you want to achieve success and gain the respect of your peers, forget all the negative connotations associated with making a mistake. Don’t deny failure; rather be determined to learn from it. This black box mindset ensures that every mistake is exploited to its fullest to make you and your business better and more successful.

It’s all in our mindset.

However, real success is built on failure.

During a pre-mortem, people don’t consider what might go wrong: rather, they look at the product or service as if it is already dead in the water and try to figure out what caused the death. Pre-mortems are a way to garner the benefits of hindsight and strengthen a plan before it’s even been put into action.

First, redefine failure. Instead of expecting perfection and penalizing yourself when mistakes are made, embrace what you learn from your failures.