Black Box Thinking — Matthew Syed
I've been sitting with Black Box Thinking for a while after reading the 2026 anniversary edition. One of the more interesting ideas is how aviation effectively forces learning through black boxes and no-blame investigations, while systems like medicine and justice often struggle to learn as readily because mistakes can quickly become legal or reputational battles. The aviation system is designed to focus on understanding failure rather than immediately finding an individual to punish.
Syed is excellent at explaining what happens after disasters, but he doesn’t spend much time on the day-to-day reality of high-performing systems. The book gets to “we should learn from mistakes” without really showing what that looks like when it’s working.
Similar(ish) books that I picked up this year:
How Big Things Get Done (Flyvbjerg, 2023): Great data on why megaprojects fail. Breaking down what separates the projects that deliver from the ones that blow out on cost and schedule.
The Boring Day (Wheeler, 2026): Picks up where Syed stops, but does reference disasters. It's about what it looks like when lessons are learned, or why they aren't. Also has the same conclusion on aviation.