Black Box Thinking

I am intrigued and encouraged by the concept of "Black Box Thinking", as explained in Matthew Syed's book with that title. Syed emphasises the important place of failure in the scheme of things, whatever the 'things' may be. If we use our failings to help us learn, then they can contribute a tremendous amount. As Syed says: "To spatk the imagination and take our insights to their fullest expression, we should not insulate ourselves from failure; rather we should engage with it."

Syed points out that many areas of life try to disguise failure, and refuse to admit it - with disastrous consequences. Of course, things go wrong sometimes, but the best thing to do with that is to learn from it. If we refuse to learn, often by avoiding admitting it, then the likelihood of repetition is high, and we are certainly not taking the opportunity to learn from what has gone wrong. Syed again: "We have to conceptualise (failure) not as dirty and embarrassing, but as bracing and educative. This is the notion we need to instil in our children: that failure is a part of life and learning, and that the desire to avoid it leads to stagnation."

The title - and the concept - comes from the black box in an aeroplane which is designed to record exactly what has happened, so that we may understand what has gone wrong and learn from it. "Failure is inevitable in a complex world. This is precisely why learning from mistakes is so imperative."

The idea can be applied almost anywhere - but that does, of course, include our understanding of our call to be God's people. We are not going to be perfect, despite Jesus' call to us to make that our aim, but we can do our best, and we can learn from those things that we get wrong.

"Errors can be thought of as the gap between what we hoped would happen, and what actually did happen. Cutting-edge organisations are always seeking to close this gap, but in order to do so they have to have a system geared up to take advantage of these learning opportunities."