And most of those mistakes are never made public, because of malpractice settlements with nondisclosure clauses. It highlights the need for a growth mindset in life…It advocates for changing attitudes towards failure, and understanding that the only way we learn is by trying things and altering our behaviour based on the results. Small changes in every area of our life doesn’t make a difference at a time, however, add over the long term.

We are going to trust our hunches, our existing knowledge, and the stories that we tell ourselves about the problems we face, rather than testing our assumptions, seeing their flaws, and learning. It didn’t look at male ego as a barrier to admitting failure but when mentioning “surgeons” I didn’t get the feeling that included women.To make it clearer, the author tours readers through the process of two most responsible industries in the world and how they both react when it comes to failure. Airlines and aviation generally has learned from its failures which is one of the main reasons why air travel is so safe. Everything related to our certain goal could improve by only 1 percent, then those small gains would add up to remarkable achievement. When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs.

Intelligence and seniority when allied to cognitive dissonance and ego is one of the most formidable barriers to progress in the world today. The interested parties are given every reason to cooperate, since the evidence compiled by the accident investigation branch is inadmissible in court proceedings. When we are misled into regarding the world as simpler than it really is, we not only resist testing our top-down strategies and assumptions, we also become more defensive when they are challenged by our peers or by the data. The author quotes some interesting examples from industry where a culture of reporting failures results in a much more relaxed and creative working environment when compared with an environment where failures are punished.When we have deep beliefs on a topic, we are more likely to unconsciously reframe evidence than to alter our belief. The book is full of engaging stories and interesting anecdotes on how the human psyche has the potential to deal with failure in a variety of ways. The book is geared more toward high-level concepts and organizational applications than individual self-help per se, but it’s packed with Big Ideas (get a copy here). It forces you to think deeply about the decisions you have made personally and professionally – and more importantly, the failures as a result of those decisions. I was surprised at what a page turner ‘Black Box Thinking’ could be, and also that it moved me deeply at times.

In “Antifragile”, Nassim Nicholas Taleb shows how the linear model is wrong (or, at best, misleading) in everything from cybernetics, to derivatives, to medicine, to the jet engine. We look at a problem, think about it, arrive at a logical solution, then apply the solution only to find it doesn't work for some unplanned for reason or due to complexity that we don't understand.

This blind spot is not limited to science; it is a basic property of our world and it accounts, to a large extent, for our skewed attitude to failure. When we are presented with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs, we tend to reject the evidence or shoot the messenger rather than amend our beliefs. Every aircraft is equipped with two almost-indestructible black boxes, one of which records instructions sent to the onboard electronic systems, and another that records the conversations and sounds in the cockpit.