Black Box Thinking

Black Box Thinking reveals that all paths to success lead through failure and what you can do to change your perspective on it, admit your mistakes, and build your own black box to consistently learn and improve from the feedback failure gives you.

What’s worse than forgetting to send off your monthly status report to your biggest client? Having to show up the next day and admit it to your boss.

Failure is never cool when it happens, even though the culture of entrepreneurship is trying hard to tell you otherwise. Having a failed startup has almost become a badge of honor, but what it really means is that you let too much small failures accumulate, until you eventually had to suck up a huge one: that your company’s not working.

Imagine having to tell your investor that you just cost them $3 million. Shouldn’t make for a good day. While the goal remains to avoid failure on a grand scale, this can only happen if you admit as many small mistakes as you can.

Case in point: Juan Rivera was falsely convicted for rape and murder in 1992 and spent the following 13 years in prison. Even though DNA testing had been used as early as 1984, it took until 2004 until police finally agreed to test the evidence from the case – and found he was innocent. Incapable of admitting their mistake (because it was a grave one), it took another 7 years until Rivera was finally released (and paid a $20 million settlement).

For the prosecutors, admitting their serious mistake would probably have meant they’d lose their jobs, on top of destroying their confidence – so they didn’t.

Admitting mistakes is tough, but it’s the only way to prevent making even worse ones. If you can start by admitting to yourself that you made one, you’re one step ahead.

So how can you make it easier to admit your mistakes? One way would be to treat all of your ideas and conclusions as hypotheses. The world is a scary and complex place, so naturally, we tend to oversimplify things. If we considered every problem in our lives all the time, we’d probably end up paralyzed and not doing anything. Simplifying is a way for us to survive everyday life and navigate the world. But sometimes, it doesn’t work. For example, bloodletting was a common medical practice for centuries, but it actually ended up killing people, instead of curing them. Doctors never tested the validity of the practice, assuming that this “cleansing act” must be the right way. It never occurred to them that people might need their blood the most when they’re sick. Their view was flipped:…