The Logic of Failure: Recognizing and Avoiding Error in Complex Situations

Dietrict Dörner’s excellent book, The Logic of Failure: Recognizing and Avoiding Error in Complex Situations,  provides us example after example of real situations where well-meaning decisions made things worse because those behind the decisions did not take the time or have the necessary “lenses” to properly understand the the complexity of the system in which they were intervening. 

For example, using the infamous Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor disaster he shows how a set of decisions to avert the crisis  each correct in itself taken together produced a catastrophy. 

My favourite section is where Professor Dörner reminds us that all solutions are conditional and when we think we have discovered universally applicable solutions (Golden Rules) it is only because we have forgotten this fact and replaced the “IF” preceding our rule with an ALWAYS or NEVER in our own minds!

Ken Thompson (aka The BumbleBee) blogs about bioteams, virtual collaboration and business simulation at www.bioteams.com.

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