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

by Matthew Syed

It is not easy for a grieving family to insist on an investigation when the experts are telling them it is not necessary. But Martin Bromiley wouldn’t give up. Why? Because he had spent his entire professional life in an industry with a different – and unusual – attitude to failure. He is a pilot. He has flown for commercial airlines for more than twenty years. He has even lectured on system safety. He didn’t want the lessons from a botched operation to die along with his wife. So he asked questions. He wrote letters. And as he discovered more about the circumstances surrounding his wife’s death, he began to suspect that it wasn’t a one-off. He realised that the mistake may have had a ‘signature’, a subtle pattern which, if acted upon, could save future lives. The doctors in charge of the operation couldn’t have known this for a simple but devastating reason: historically, healthcare institutions have not routinely collected data on how accidents happen, and so cannot detect meaningful patterns, let alone learn from them. In aviation, on the other hand, pilots are generally open and honest about their own mistakes (crash-landings, near misses). The industry has powerful, independent bodies designed to investigate crashes. Failure is not regarded as an indictment of the specific pilot who messes up, but a precious learning opportunity for all pilots, all airlines and all regulators.