This book is a classic work by Matthew Said, a well-known British journalist and broadcaster. He has been a columnist for The Times of London since 1999, and is a regular contributor to the BBC's radio and television commentary programmes.
In this book, Said puts forward a very special point of view, that is - the most important determinant of success in any field is failure and the attitude of having the courage to admit failure. However, most of the time, we are stuck in failure. Failure hinders progress and innovation, and sometimes damages our careers and family lives. In fact, few of us admit our failures, and not everyone learns from failure. In this book, Said shares his own experience and the stories of successful people with everyone. Let us take a look at how they used black box thinking to achieve success.
1. If you don’t learn from failure, you will never achieve success
Do you know what the similarities are between Google and Jordan? You may not realize that they have actually experienced countless failures. Everyone has experienced failure, it could be a lost football game, a bad job interview or a failed exam. However, in a profession like medicine, a small mistake can mean the difference between life and death.
The British Audit Office published an investigation report in 2005. Data showed that an average of 34,000 people died in man-made accidents in the UK every year. Another report shows that 10% of patients in the UK are killed or disabled due to man-made medical errors. This proportion is even higher in France, reaching almost 14%.
Some people will say that this is related to medical equipment and medical conditions, but it turns out that medical accidents that occur in many hospitals are traceable. In other words, if doctors can carefully study the root causes of each accident and share their experiences and lessons with others, similar medical accidents can be effectively avoided. It sounds easy, but actually implementing it is another story. This also explains why similar accidents have occurred frequently throughout the history of human development.
2. Improving the quality of each of your work tasks will eventually bring about a qualitative leap
Said introduced a new concept - marginal gain.
If you can divide your work tasks and performance into small parts, and then improve each small part by one percent each time, then the overall thing you have to do will be better. Produce a qualitative leap.
There is a legend in the British professional cycling community, his name is Brailsford, and his life can be said to be a legend. In 1997, Brailsford joined British Track Cycling as a consultant. In 2000, he helped Great Britain win its first Olympic gold medal in the time trial. In 2004, Brailsford was appointed as the instructor of the British team. A year later, he led the British team to win two Olympic gold medals. In 2008, they won a record eight gold medals, and at the 2012 London Olympics, the British team continued to win eight gold medals.
Brailsford said: "This is all about marginal gain. When you divide a big goal into small parts, all you need to do is to improve each small part. When you divide When each small part is put together, you will gain a qualitative leap."
First of all, what you need to do is to let yourself and your team fully understand this concept so that you can do things. respond quickly. If there are many members in the team, then the role of marginal gain is not only to complete the task, but also to make the entire team work together.
Next you need to develop a complete plan. You need to list all the factors that may have an impact on your work or tasks, such as your technical capabilities, or your ability to innovate, and whether the environment you are in provides you with moral support. By listing these factors, you can more clearly see the steps you need to complete to achieve success. Next, you need to decide which factors to improve by 1%. If you can use it every day at work, the effect will be more obvious.
3. Avoid closed-circuit thinking in order to learn from mistakes
In addition to the concept of "marginal gain", Said also redefined the word "closed-circuit". "Closed circuit" and "open circuit" have special meanings in the engineering field.
"Closed-circuit thinking" refers to failure due to wrong or misunderstood information, making it difficult for you to make progress on the road to success. But in open-circuit thinking, because feedback is received in a timely and accurate manner, mistakes are analyzed and experiences are learned, a failure experience will actually lead to improvement.
The famous ancient Greek medical scientist Galen has always been called a pioneer in the medical field. He once insisted on using bloodletting therapy and declared to the outside world that bloodletting therapy was omnipotent.
In many cases, bloodletting is useless or even extremely harmful to the human body. Just after hearing Galen say that this is a universal treatment, everyone began to imitate it. They began to try it on patients without conducting repeated trials and demonstrations on this treatment. If the patient recovers, the doctor will say that universal bloodletting saved him. If the patient dies, the doctor will explain that he must be terminally ill and even bloodletting cannot save him! Situations like this are typical closed-circuit thinking.
So how do we break negative closed-circuit thinking?
First of all, parents and children should change their attitudes towards exams and results. It is important to get good grades, but it is more important for children to understand the mistakes they made in this exam and carefully summarize them to avoid making the same mistakes in subsequent exams. As a parent, the next time you see your child's report card, in addition to words of praise and encouragement, try to remind your child: "Don't forget to look back and see what you didn't do well in this exam." Learning from your mistakes can guide you to your next success.
4. Too much blame will only become a stumbling block on the road to success
Generally speaking, failure will have a deep negative impact on people, coupled with the This feeling of shame will become even more intense due to other people's comments. In fact, the reaction to failure is not innate to people, but is greatly influenced by culture and psychology. The country with the most serious sense of shame may be Japan. Due to complex social, historical and economic reasons, the word failure will be branded with shame in Japan. Most often, if you mess up, you and your family will be humiliated. Here, failure is not viewed as a learning opportunity but as a sign of your incompetence. The blame and shame that come with failure in business are even more common. Because of the fear of failure and shame, Japanese people will not easily choose to start a business.
Too much blame will only become a stumbling block on the road to success.
5. Have you heard of the "Beckham Effect"? If you try harder, you might succeed.
As one of England's best players, David Beckham holds the record of 115 appearances for England. He captained England for six years and played a total of 59 games, including three World Cups. As such an outstanding player, people often say that he is born with the talent to play football. Is this really the case? The author Said will take you back to Beckham's childhood to see how he entered the field of football.
Beckham lives in east London. He has practiced playing football in his backyard every afternoon since he was six years old. Although the backyard at home was small at the time, it was enough for a little boy to practice kicking the ball alone. . Beckham's initial practice started with bumping the ball. At first, Beckham's performance was mediocre. He could only bump the ball 5 or 6 times at a time, and then the ball would escape his control. Despite this, Beckham was still very enthusiastic and started practicing every afternoon after coming home from school. He would drop the ball, pick it up, do it again, then drop it again, pick it up again, and so on.
Slowly, Beckham hit the ball more and more times. Half a year later, he was able to hit the ball 50 times in a row. After another six months, he could do it 200 times. When he was 9 years old, he set a new record for himself: 2,003 times in 15 minutes. This number would have increased if not for the excruciating pain in the leg muscles. In 2014, Beckham said in an interview with Said: "People only care about whether my free kicks were scored, and all I think about are the previous goals that were not scored. It is precisely because I have experienced those countless goals. How many times of failure can you finally achieve success?"
We can see an interesting phenomenon from Beckham's words. When faced with success and failure, successful people often react differently from ordinary people.
In the face of failure, they did not escape or shrink, but accepted their failure generously and bravely. More importantly, they will make the next try. This is the "Beckham effect".