Meltdown

why our systems fail and what we can do about it

by Chris Clearfield

294 pages

English language

Published Sept. 18, 2018 by Penguin Press.

ISBN:: 978-0-7352-2263-2
OCLC Number:: 993419323

(4 reviews)

"Weaving together cutting-edge social science with riveting stories that take us from the frontlines of the Volkswagen scandal to backstage at the Oscars, and from deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico to the top of Mount Everest, Chris Clearfield and András Tilcsik explain how the increasing complexity of our systems creates conditions ripe for failure and why our brains and teams can't keep up. They highlight the paradox of progress: Though modern systems have given us new capabilities, they've become vulnerable to surprising meltdowns--and even to corruption and misconduct. But Meltdown isn't just about failure; it's about solutions--whether you're managing a team or the chaos of your family's morning routine. It reveals why ugly designs make us safer, how a five-minute exercise can prevent billion-dollar catastrophes, why teams with fewer experts are better at managing risk, and why diversity is one of our best safeguards against failure. The result is …

5 editions

Alex M reviewed Meltdown by Chris Clearfield

Review of 'Meltdown' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Disclaimer: I've only made it three quarters through this book before I called it.

This is an OK book, but it didn't do it for me. I was expecting more actual advice in the second part, and less fluff.

The first part is the stronger of the two parts of this book. It does a good job of explaining how the complexity of our systems is becoming untenable. But after the relatively short first part, the book doesn't really deliver on its promise to offer a framework for dealing with complex systems. What you get is story after story. And that gets old fast. The authors do provide some examples of how tweaks to the systems in question have improved safety, but nothing as coherent as a framework.

This is more like a 2.5 stars for me, but rounding down felt too harsh, so there we go, three stars.

Eric Lawton reviewed Meltdown by Chris Clearfield

Review of 'Meltdown' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

I was a little disappointed because I'd read an excerpt in a newspaper - probably the best pages. Still, an important subject.

I know quite a bit about this subject because my profession was complex IT system design, and I found the book was overly simplistic. This is not because some of the tools they suggest, such as for structured decision making on a small scale, are too simple; they're appropriate at the small scales and often things seem almost too obvious that people thing they don't need emphasizing. Atul Gawande's book [b:The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right|6667514|The Checklist Manifesto How to Get Things Right|Atul Gawande|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1312061594s/6667514.jpg|6862414] is a great example.
But these authors are not Atul Gawande and he did not go into detail on how and when the several ideas he introduced are useful.
In the end, I think they did an OK layman's job on Why Our Systems Fail, giving lots of anecdotes about failures and how they arose, but less so on What We can Do About It . There is a lot more to the subject than they hinted at. However, I gave it four stars because they did give a few useful ideas such as the pre-mortem, the idea of using structure decision making and so on, that are useful tools to have in your box. It also links examples of what we now know about the blind spots in human psychology to how to use teams to compensate.

In summary, not a bad book but I was hoping for better.

AssaultPepper

rated it

Oct. 19, 2023

atayarani

rated it

Aug. 5, 2021

Subjects

Errors
Social systems
Business failures
Organizational behavior
Social aspects
System theory
Organizational sociology
Decision making

Lists

learning to hear, prioritize, and usefully act on warnings at the institutional level