Black Box Thinking: Why Some People Never Learn from Their Mistakes - But Some Do

by Matthew Syed

The problem today, he says, is that we operate with a ballistic model of success. The idea is that once you’ve identified a target (creating a new website, designing a new product, improving a political outcome) you come up with a really clever strategy designed to hit the bull’s-eye. You construct the perfect rifle. You create a model of how the bullet will be affected by wind and gravity. You do your math to get the strategy just right. Then you calibrate the elevation of the rifle, pull the trigger, and watch as the bullet sails toward the target. This approach is flawed for two reasons. First, the real world contains greater complexity than just wind and gravity: there are endless variables and interdependencies. Take a policy as simple as reducing the dangers of smoking by cutting tar and nicotine in cigarettes. It sounds great in theory, particularly when used in conjunction with a clever marketing campaign. It looks like a ballistic strategy perfectly designed to hit an important public health target. But when this idea was implemented in practice, it failed. Smokers compensated for the lack of nicotine by smoking more cigarettes and taking longer and deeper drags. The net result was an increase in carcinogens and carbon monoxide.22 That is what happens in systems populated by human beings: there are unintended consequences. And this is why it is difficult to formulate an effective strategy from on high, via a blueprint. The second problem is even more elemental. By...