The Art of Manliness

#517: What Big-Time Catastrophes Can Teach Us About How to Improve the Systems of Our Lives

Jun 17, 2019

In this engaging dialogue, Chris Clearfield and Andras Tilcsik, co-authors of "Meltdown," explore how major disasters, from financial crashes to nuclear meltdowns, can inform better decision-making in our lives. They discuss the distinction between complicated and complex systems, shedding light on vulnerabilities that lead to failures. The guests share compelling anecdotes, like a Starbucks social media misstep, and emphasize the need for diverse perspectives and a blameless culture to strengthen organizational resilience and improve everyday systems.

56:07

Creator website

Episode guests

Andras Tilcsik

Chris Clearfield

AI Chapters

Episode notes

Intro

3min

Learning from Catastrophes

8min

Navigating Complexity in Systems

8min

The Perils of Social Media Campaigns: A Starbucks Case Study

3min

Navigating Complex Social Systems

6min

Navigating Complexity in Modern Systems

17min

Diversity and Decision-Making

13min

Overcoming Decision-Making Biases for Improved Systems

3min

Whenever a financial or technological disaster takes place, people wonder if it could have possibly been averted.

My guests today say that the answer is often yes, and that the lessons around why big disasters happen can teach us something about preventing catastrophes in our businesses and personal lives. Their names are Chris Clearfield and Andras Tilcsik, and they're the authors of Meltdown: Why Our Systems Fail and What We Can Do About It.

We begin our discussion getting into how they got interested in exploring how everything from plane crashes to nuclear meltdowns to flash stock market crashes actually share common causes. We then discuss the difference between complicated and complex systems, why complex systems have weaknesses that make them vulnerable to failure, and how such complexity is on the rise in our modern, technological era. Along the way, Chris and Andras provide examples of complex systems that have crashed and burned, from the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor meltdown to a Starbucks social media campaign gone awry. We end our conversation digging into specific tactics engineers and organizations use to create stronger, more catastrophe-proof systems, and how regular folks can use these insights to help make their own lives run a bit more smoothly.

Get the show notes at aom.is/meltdown.

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