Part one of a three-part series, in which the journalist and author Matthew Syed explores how and why individuals and organisations learn from their mistakes or fail to do so. He explores the common obstacles to learning lessons from experience and how they can be surmounted.

The series follows a wide-ranging approach, taking in government and public services such as the NHS and the Police, the commercial world from aviation to Google, the role of education, and underlying principles of psychology and philosophy, scientific method and individual decision-making.

Interviewees in the series include the comedian John Cleese, the entrepreneur Richard Branson, the inventor James Dyson, the campaigner Alastair Campbell, and Sara Thornton, head of the National Police Chiefs Council, as well as others from the fields of medicine, education, social work, manufacturing, government policy and academic research.

Producer: Martin Rosenbaum. Show less