Why most people don’t learn from their mistakes; but some do
We don’t like making mistakes. We shun them, we hate making them and if we do, we hate admitting them.
Black Box Thinking is about changing that, so we can do what’s necessary to achieve our goals in our lives. Black Box Thinking is about the willingness and tenacity to investigate the lessons that often exist when we fail or when we make mistakes, but which we rarely exploit.
The name “Black Box Thinking” has an interesting back story and it is inspired by the aviation industry.
British de Havilland Comet I was the world’s first commercial airline. It was launched in 1952. But within 1 year of its launch, it was involved in 3 major accidents and there were no survivors. The fleet was grounded but investigators couldn’t find what caused the crashes, so flights were resumed. 2 weeks later, another plane crashed in Naples, Italy. It was the final nail in Comet’s coffin.
Eventually, the flaw was identified. Hairline cracks were formed at the corners of the plane’s square windows ( as shown in the image below with red lines), spreading across the fuselage and causing the entire plane to come apart. That’s the reason, why flights have oval windows now.
As a result, the accident investigator suggested that an indestructible flight data recorder in each flight, which every piece of information including the pilot conversation in the cockpit. This flight data recorder is called “Black box”
No industry takes mistakes more seriously than the airline industry. If we make a mistake at our work, it's still solvable. But if a pilot makes a mistake, it’s a matter of life or death.
“Everything we know in aviation, every rule in the rule book, every procedure we have, we know because someone somewhere died” — American Pilot & Captain Sully
With each crash, future flights become safer.
Decades of institutionalized learning has driven the accident rate to a place wherein 2014, for the major airlines, there was one crash for every 8.3 million take-offs. That is a cultural and psychological achievement driven by this dynamic mind-set.
This is black box thinking and it can be applied to our personal and professional lives.
Human beings are the exact opposite of the aviation industry. Let’s say you decide to invest in the stock market and bought a company’s share at 1000. Unfortunately, now the share price falls to 100 within a few months. What will go through your head? You will be probably praying that the stock price rebounds or start blaming the company’s management or start cursing your bad luck. I usually stop looking at the stock price and behave as if nothing happened. That used to be my way of dealing with my mistakes whenever I invest in the wrong companies. But very few people will accept reality and analyze their own flight recorder.
Taking an approach to learning from our mistakes is indicative of having a ‘growth mindset’ which means we are anxious not to cover-up our mistakes but to see them as ‘precious learning opportunities.’
It can be done through a 3-step process
1)Radical Acceptance
Radical acceptance of our mistakes, defeats, deficiencies — How it works? Usually, we see other people far more clearly than we see ourselves. That’s why we are always frequently disappointed by others but rarely by ourselves. So the best way is to find a friend or family member we can rely on to give us the truth. Initially, it will be difficult to accept the facts we don’t like, but over time we will start taking the judgment of others seriously.
2) Build your own black box
Just radical acceptance is not enough. We need to build our own black box. For example, whenever I make a big decision, I usually write down what’s going through my brain — ideas, assumptions, emotions, train of thoughts, and conclusion. Basically why I am making the decision. If the decision turns out to be a dud, I look at my flight data recorder and analyze precisely what it was that led to this mistake.
This is one good way to look deeply into your decision making. If you do this and still if you couldn’t find any mistake, either you don’t understand the world or you don’t understand yourself. If you can’t find where you put your footing wrong, you are going to fall flat again. Persistence in your analysis will pay off.
3) Rectify your mistakes
Radical acceptance and Black box thinking is not enough. We need to rectify our mistakes. Get future-proofing.
“If you won’t attack a problem while its solvable and wait until its unfixable, you can argue that you are damn foolish you deserve the problem” — Charlie Munger.
Don’t wait for the consequences to unfold.
“If you don’t deal with the reality, then reality will deal with you” — Alex Haley.
So accept reality — accept it radically. Especially the ones you don’t like. It might be painful at the moment, but it got to be done. It will be worth later on.
The fact is none of us wants to fail. It is not something any sane person would set out to do. But failure is also a stepping stone to success when used properly.
Even living a good life, we’ll have to deal with our fair share of failure, and it’s ok to put a foot wrong every now and then. The key is to discover why it happened and tackle the issue at its root.
Because problems aren’t like Wine — they don’t improve with age.
All paths to success lead through failure and what we can do to change our perspective on it, admit our mistakes, and build our own black box to consistently learn and improve from the feedback failure gives us.
