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294 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2018
A few years ago when I still had Scribd, I found a book by Charles Perrow called “Normal Accidents.” My Goodreads review of it is here. As it turns out, that wasn’t the kind of book I was looking for. “Meltdown” is exactly what I was looking for. It takes Perrow’s theories and provides a more modern and digestible framework.
Perrow’s thesis is that in systems with sufficient complexity and tight coupling (not a lot of time or room for error), accidents are inevitable. He calls them normal accidents. “Meltdown” uses this and applies it to more recent accidents - everything from Wall Street crashes to Enron to software bugs to potential issues with dams and nuclear power plants. Where Perrow was writing in the 80s, which was the thing I remember most from his book, Clearfield and Tilcsik have the advantage of everything he knew and everything that has happened since.
This doesn’t make me feel any better on a global scale, because if anything normal accidents have become more normal and expanded out into more areas of life. “Meltdown” makes it clear that areas that formerly were loosely coupled are now tightening, such as dam safety. It does also point out areas where active work to decrease issues has been successful, such as cockpit resource management (a philosophy of flight decks where first officers feel more empowered to challenge potentially dangerous actions by their captains). Overall, though, I don’t feel like my world is any safer than it was before.
That’s not to say it can’t become safer. Taking lessons from Perrow and other systems analysts can help and have helped many businesses. It’s too bad this wasn’t around before Target rolled out in Canada. Instead of being an object lesson in failure for Clearfield and Tilcsik, they could have been a lesson in success. Five of five stars.