Black Box Thinking: Growth Mindset and the Secrets of High Performance

by Matthew Syed

is partly because we are so willing to blame others for their mistakes that we are so keen to conceal our own. We anticipate, with remarkable clarity, how people will react, how they will point the finger, how little time they will take to put themselves in the tough, high-pressure situation in which the error occurred. The net effect is simple: it obliterates openness and spawns cover-ups. It destroys the vital information we need in order to learn.

at a collective level, at the level of systemic complexity, success can only happen when we admit our mistakes, learn from them, and create a climate where it is, in a certain sense, ‘safe’ to fail.

‘can we afford the time to investigate failure?’, seems the wrong way round. The real question is ‘can we afford not to?’

the price it pays for immunity from failure is high indeed: it cannot learn. Astrology has not changed in any meaningful way for over two centuries.

‘You can have the best procedures in the world but they won’t work unless you change attitudes towards error.’

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. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.

‘Cognitive dissonance’ is the term Festinger coined to describe the inner tension we feel when, among other things, our beliefs are challenged by evidence.

Self-justification is more insidious. Lying to oneself destroys the very possibility of learning.

Intelligence and seniority when allied to cognitive dissonance and ego is one of the most formidable barriers to progress in the world today.

Memory, it turns out, is not as reliable as we think.

memory is a system dispersed throughout the brain, and is subject to all sorts of biases. Memories are suggestible. We often assemble fragments of entirely different experiences and weave them together into what seems like a coherent whole. With each recollection, we engage in editing.

learning from mistakes relies on two components: first, you need to have the right kind of system – one that harnesses errors as a means of driving progress; and second, you need a mindset that enables such a system to flourish.

Cognitive dissonance occurs when mistakes are too threatening to admit to, so they are reframed or ignored. This can be thought of as the internal fear of failure: how we struggle to admit mistakes to ourselves.

‘I realised early on that having a grand strategy was futile on its own. You also have to look at a smaller level, figure out what is working and what isn’t. Each step may be small, but the aggregation can be huge.’

Marginal gains is not about making small changes and hoping they fly. Rather, it is about breaking down a big problem into small parts in order to rigorously establish what works and what doesn’t.

But this leaves out an indispensable feature of creativity. Without a problem, without a failure, without a flaw, without a frustration, innovation has nothing to latch on to.

Removing failure from innovation is like removing oxygen from a fire.

Failures feed the imagination. You cannot have the one without the other.’

The original idea is only 2 per cent of the journey. You mustn’t neglect the rest.

that a co-worker had stapled to his cubicle wall. It read: ‘The six phases of a project: 1. Enthusiasm 2. Disillusionment 3. Panic 4. Search for the guilty 5. Punishment of the innocent 6. Rewards for the uninvolved.’

we progress fastest when we face up to failure – and learn from it.

You’re not born with fear of failure, it’s not an instinct, it’s something that grows and develops in you as you get older.

‘Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently,’

Excuses in life are typically created retrospectively. We have all pointed to a bad night’s sleep, or a cold, or the dog being sick, to justify a poor performance. But these excuses are so obvious and self-serving that people see through them.

‘One can admit to a minor flaw [drinking] in order to avoid admitting to a much more threatening one [I am not as bright as I like to think].’

Sobre el auto saboteo

Self-esteem, in short, is a vastly overvalued psychological trait. It can cause us to jeopardise learning if we think it might risk us looking anything less than perfect. What we really need is resilience: the capacity to face up to failure, and to learn from it. Ultimately, that is what growth is all about.