We
interpret the past—what we’ve experienced and what we’ve been told—to chart a
course for the future. It seems like a reasonable approach, but it could be a
mistake. The problem is that we view the past through filters that distort
reality. One filter is the business environment, which focuses on outcomes
rather than the processes that lead to them and celebrates successes while
ignoring failures, thus making it hard for us to learn from mistakes. Another
is our circle of advisers, who may censor the information they share with us. A
third filter is our own limited reasoning abilities. We tend to focus on
evidence that confirms our beliefs and gloss over information that contradicts
them, and we read too much into our personal experience, which inevitably involves
a small sample of incidents. We can base our decisions on a clearer view of the
world if we study failures and near misses— especially the processes behind
them; encourage all employees to pursue preventive measures instead of just
solving problems; surround ourselves with people who will speak frankly; search
for evidence that our hunches are wrong, and encourage employees, data
scientists, and consultants to do the same; and broaden our perspective in
order to give new meaning to our varied experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]