MELTDOWN: Why Our Systems Fail and What We Can Do About It

Meltdown: Why Our Systems Fail and What We Can Do About It, published by Allen Lane.  

Clearfield and Tilcsik present an innovative and engaging account of  how seemingly unconnected disasters in the nuclear, medical and  transportation sectors share common causes.  Applying leading-edge  social sciences research with riveting real-life stories, they explain  how the increasing complexity of our systems create conditions ripe for  failure and how our brains can’t keep up.  They also provide numerous  solutions for how to deal with increasing complexity in today’s fast-paced world to prevent ‘meltdowns’.

Chris Clearfield started his career as a derivatives trader who worked in New York, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. At the same time he trained as  a pilot and developed a personal interest in avoiding catastrophic  mistakes. He is the founder of System Logic, a research and consulting  firm that helps organizations manage the risk of catastrophic failure. He has written about complexity and failure for Forbes and the Harvard  Kennedy School Review.

András 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 and as one of thirty management thinkers most likely to shape the future of organizations.  András is a Fellow of the Michael Lee-Chin Institute for Corporate Citizenship and is studying corporate practices that reduce the risk and impact of environmental disasters.

The 2019 finalists included:

• Howard Green, Railroader: The Unfiltered Genius and Controversy of Four-time CEO Hunter Harrison, published by Page Two.

• Phil Lind with Robert Brehl, Right Hand Man: How Phil Lind Guided the Genius of Ted Rogers, Canada’s Foremost Entrepreneur, published by Barlow Books.

• David Shoalts, Hockey Fight In Canada: The Big Media Faceoff over the NHL, published by Douglas & McIntyre.