Failure is a seemingly inevitable part of life. However, surprising new research shows that the myriad of failures that dominate headlines every day share similar causes. Chris Clearfield and András Tilcsik, co-authors of the book Meltdown: Why Our Systems Fail and What We Can Do about It, believe that if we can understand what lies behind these failures, we can make better decisions at work and at home. 

Chris Clearfield is the founder of System Logic, and András Tilcsik is the Canada Research Chair in Strategy, Organizations, and Society at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. Together, they combine social science and stories – from the Gulf of Mexico to Mount Everest – to analyze why we’re so vulnerable to failure and what we can do to manage it.