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

by Matthew Syed

The irony is that Sullenberger, feted by presidents, might have made the precisely same mistake in the same circumstances. The fact that he didn’t, and emerged a hero, was for a simple but profound reason: the industry in which he operates had learned the lessons. It is both apt and revealing that Sullenberger, a modest and self-evidently decent man, has made precisely this point. In a television interview months after the miracle landing on the Hudson, he offered this beautiful gem of wisdom: Everything we know in aviation, every rule in the rule book, every procedure we have, we know because someone somewhere died . . . We have purchased at great cost, lessons literally bought with blood that we have to preserve as institutional knowledge and pass on to succeeding generations. We cannot have the moral failure of forgetting these lessons and have to relearn them.