Meltdown: Why Our Systems Fail and What We Can Do About It - Softcover

Clearfield, Chris; Tilcsik, Andrįs

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1786492261 ISBN 13: 9781786492265

Publisher: Atlantic Books, 2019

Synopsis

Financial Times' best business books of the year, 2018

'Endlessly fascinating, brimming with insight, and more fun than a book about failure has any right to be.' - Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit

What can we learn from our most disastrous failures?

An accidental overdose in a state-of-the-art hospital.

The Starbucks publicity stunt that spectacularly backfired.

The mix-up at the 2017 Oscars ceremony.

As technology rapidly advances, it brings with it an explosion of complexity that can trip us up. Meltdown uses real-life examples to reveal how errors in thinking, perception, and design lie behind both our everyday mistakes and our most terrifying disasters. It reveals 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. This eye-opening book will change the way you see our complex world - and your place within it.

'Essential reading.' - Martin Ford, bestselling author of Rise of the Robots

About this title

Review

Exciting and insightful. Source: Financial Times

Endlessly fascinating, brimming with insight, and more fun than a book about failure has any right to be, Meltdown will transform how you think about the systems that govern our lives. This is a wonderful book. Source: Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better

Not for the faint of heart. In crisp, compelling prose, the authors explain why failures occur so often in today's unfathomably complex systems. Their insights and takeaways offer crucial guidance for avoiding your own disasters. Source: Daniel H. Pink, bestselling author of Drive

As technology advances, it brings an explosion of complexity and interdependence that can threaten our most critical systems and organizations in unforeseen ways. Meltdown is essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand these dangers and what can be done to address them. Source: Martin Ford, bestselling author of Rise of the Robots

Too often, we blame failures on bad apples when the real culprits are bad barrels. This engaging, evidence-based book sheds light on why blunders and bankruptcies happen-and how you can get better at designing systems to prevent them. Source: Adam Grant, author of Originals and co-author of Option B

Meltdown is essential reading for any leader. We are all human. We all make mistakes. But in complex, whirlwind environments, those mistakes can spiral quickly out of control. This book can help. Source: Anne-Marie Slaughter, author of Unfinished Business

A cautionary study in how complex systems can easily go awry... A useful, thought-provoking book. Source: Kirkus

From the Author

Chris Clearfield is a former derivatives trader. He is a licensed commercial pilot and a graduate of Harvard University, where he studied physics and biology. Chris has written about complexity and failure for The Guardian, Forbes, and the Harvard Kennedy School Review.

Andrįs Tilcsik holds the Canada Research Chair in Strategy, Organizations, and Society at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. He has been recognized as one of the world's top forty business professors under forty. The United Nations named his course on organizational failure as the best course on disaster risk management in a business school.

Edition details

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1786492261
• ISBN 13: 9781786492265
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 304