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Why Is the Aviation Industry So Much Better at Learning From Failure Than Medicine?
Discover the critical difference between aviation safety and medical errors in Matthew Syed’s Black Box Thinking. Learn to bypass cognitive dissonance, treat personal mistakes as system flaws, and build a feedback loop that drives rapid improvement.
Ready to stop repeating the same errors? Continue reading to master the three specific “mistake reframes” that will help you build a fail-proof system for daily success.
If you boarded a plane in the 1920s, there was a 1 in 666 chance you’d die. Today, that risk has dropped to 1 in 2.4 million—a 15,000-fold improvement. Meanwhile, medical errors inside hospitals—including operating on the wrong person, administering the wrong drugs, or leaving objects inside patients—cause between 250,000 and 400,000 deaths in the U.S. every year. That’s the equivalent of two fully loaded jumbo jets crashing—every 24 hours.
After reading Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed, I realized the key difference between aviation’s incredible progress and medicine’s ongoing crisis: pilots and aviation specialists learn from mistakes immediately, while many medical professionals dismiss their mistakes.
The reason: Cognitive dissonance.
Like most of us, doctors see themselves as highly trained, hardworking, and competent people, so when they accidentally harm a patient, that truth is too painful to accept, and their brains manufacture rationalizations, like: “We can’t be 100% sure the mistake caused harm, so we don’t need to report it.” Doctors frame mistakes as “one-offs” to protect their self-esteem—but at the cost of learning and preventing potentially thousands of similar errors in the future.
However, the aviation industry has found a way to bypass this human flaw and make incredible progress.
- The aviation industry destigmatizes mistakes by assuming every error is a system error. If a tired pilot makes an error, an airline doesn’t blame the individual—it assesses the flaws in the pilot scheduling system and adjusts it to ensure pilots get more rest between shifts.
- The aviation industry makes it harmless to admit mistakes. If pilots make an error during a flight, automatic on-flight data monitors anonymously issue reports so pilots don’t fear repercussions. And pilots voluntarily report any errors the monitors miss because all aviation personnel are immune from punishment if they report mistakes within 10 days.
- Thousands of accidents are prevented each year because mistakes are openly shared and quickly analyzed. Insights lead to aviation system updates that improve millions of future flights.
By adopting an aviation-like approach to failures, mistakes, and near misses—treating them as opportunities to refine how we live and work—we can unlock rapid progress and build lasting trust with everyone around us. Here are four mistake reframes to get started:
Mistake Reframe #1: Mistakes Are Just System Flaws (they aren’t personal)
Just as the aviation industry treats every mistake or crash as an opportunity to refine cockpit design, checklists, and flight procedures, you should see every mistake as a signal to upgrade and redesign your daily system of living.
- Modify your environment or leverage new technology to reduce mistakes. For example, if you fail to prepare healthy meals, set up a recurring grocery-delivery app order so that healthy food is always in your fridge.
- Set up better accountability systems. For example, if you never finish books, join a book club that pushes you to keep up.
- Establish rituals at the beginning and end of your day to mentally rehearse doing the right things:
- Create a “daily rules” note on your phone with reminders like “No social media before noon” or “Emails are only checked at 10 AM and 2 PM,” and review it every morning.
- Set up an “End-of-Day Reflection” checklist with questions like, “Did I do my best to be patient with my kids today?” and truly evaluate your effort.
You stop feeling ashamed or defensive when you see mistakes as system flaws rather than personal shortcomings. As a result, you get curious about your mistakes and wonder: “What part of my system needs improvement?”
Mistake Reframe #2: Nothing is a One-off
Believing a mistake is a freak event is the easiest way to let yourself off the hook. But remember, this is how some medical professionals talk about accidents—and why thousands of preventable deaths keep occurring. So, when something goes wrong—or when you make a mistake but get away with it (like making a reckless call in poker and winning by sheer luck)—assume it will show up again and wreak havoc unless you get curious and upgrade your system.
Mistake Refragme #3: Mistakes Inform Success & Build Confidence
The next time you walk into a restaurant you enjoy, take a moment to realize that the well-designed menu, the meal you love, and the waiter’s ability to remember your order are all the result of thousands of little mistakes—mistakes the restaurant has made, or mistakes other restaurants have made before them. Each time customers complained about the service and dishes that didn’t quite hit the mark, the owners got curious and used the error to upgrade their system. The same is true for any successful person you meet. They didn’t shrug off failures or near misses. They dug into them, analyzed what went wrong, and built the successful habits they enjoy because of those failures.
Michael Jordan said it best: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over. And that is why I succeed.” Most people believe mistakes and failures erode confidence. But the truth is, when you step onto the court or into the boardroom with more lessons learned from past mistakes than those around you, you experience rock-solid confidence.