(3 / 5)
Note: The following review was originally done for Reedsy and is being reposted here with the permission of the site.
Research and analysis are the key to reformation, which when applied to organizations and systems ensures safety and stability. The Shape of Outcomes by Aaron Trubic offers analysis of the failure of organizations, ranging from governmental to corporate and independent ones, which resulted in major disasters in the recent human history.
Trubic starts with the most recent disaster of the political world, namely the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas militants from Gaza. His analysis of the security model on which Israeli government’s decisions were based provides an explanation of why such a preventable disaster materialized. Readers get to see the component of the failed model and its flaws responsible for the failure. In subsequent chapters, Trubic applies his analysis of the modular failure to four other major disasters in the 21st Century, most/all of which happened in developed countries and tied to organizations run by educated and qualified people.
The Shape of Outcomes offers interesting and important facts and valuable insight into the nature of failures in organizations that employ the same model for safety against loss but ignore to update and reform it by learning from past mistakes. The notable cases of disastrous failures fall in various fields from politics to oil exploration, smartphone technology, and real estate finance (the financial disaster of 2008). Applying his analysis to diverse cases of disasters gives Trubic’s work an appeal for readership beyond a single topic or area of interest.
The latter sections of the book, particularly Part 3 (The Method) take a different turn and deal with details of the role of the model’s components, how they function in the whole, and what additional checklists can be applied for more thorough vetting so as to get better outcomes. These parts feel rather dry to read and seem best suited for academic perusal than the general readership.
The Shape of Outcomes itself has a good organization with presentable division into parts, stylized fonts in chapter numbers and headings etc. Individual chapters are short; Trubic speaks with authority from a position of knowledge and insight; the book’s tone is demonstrative and in the latter parts becomes rather scholastic. The book carries a feel of disconnect from the earlier chapters in these parts as the narration zooms in on the components of the model while losing sight of the bigger picture that would keep the flow of the narration uniform.
Finally, The Shape of Outcomes has some formatting issues on both word and line levels (at least in the PDF copy that this reviewer got). It could certainly benefit from another round of thorough formatting.