Right Kind of Wrong

About the Author

Amy C. Edmondson is a leadership, teaming, and organizational learning scholar. She is currently the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School. She has written seven books and over 75 articles on the dynamic forms of collaboration needed in work environments characterized by uncertainty and ambiguity. She is best known for her pioneering work on psychological safety in the context of structural dynamics, teamwork, and innovation.

Edmondson earned a Ph.D. in organizational behavior, a Masters’ degree in psychology and a Bachelors’ degree in engineering and design from Harvard university. Before working at Harvard, she was Director of Research at Pecos River Learning Centers. She was also Chief Engineer for architect/inventor Buckminster Fuller. In 2019, Edmondson was selected the most influential thinker in Human Resources by HR Magazine. She is also currently ranked #1 on the Thinkers 50 list.

Sources: Wikipedia and “About the Author” section of the book

Our one-sentence summary

The only way to progress and innovate is through learning from failures – accepting, embracing, and understanding the failure types, contexts, and systems, as well as their impact.

Publisher’s Summary

“A revolutionary guide that will transform your relationship with failure, from the pioneering researcher of psychological safety and award-winning Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson.

We used to think of failure as the opposite of success. Now, we’re often torn between two “failure cultures”: one that says to avoid failure at all costs, the other that says fail fast, fail often. The trouble is that both approaches lack the crucial distinctions to help us separate good failure from bad. As a result, we miss the opportunity to fail well.

After decades of award-winning research, Amy Edmondson is here to upend our understanding of failure and make it work for us. In Right Kind of Wrong, Edmondson provides the framework to think, discuss, and practice failure wisely. Outlining the three archetypes of failure—simple, complex, and intelligent—Amy showcases how to minimize unproductive failure while maximizing what we gain from flubs of all stripes. She illustrates how we and our organizations can embrace our human fallibility, learn exactly when failure is our friend, and prevent most of it when it is not. This is the key to pursuing smart risks and preventing avoidable harm.

With vivid real-life stories from business, pop culture, history, and more, Edmondson gives us specifically tailored practices, skills, and mindsets to help us replace shame and blame with curiosity, vulnerability, and personal growth. You’ll never look at failure the same way again.

Source: Book Jacket

Detailed Summary

Introduction

• Because we tend to feel ashamed whenever we fail, we hide our mistakes. The problem is that in doing so, we fail to learn, as we don’t reflect on what we did wrong. Sometimes, we even deny our failures.
• This book is about learning from failure. But before that, Edmondson describes the types of failures that exist so that we can more effectively navigate such experiences.
  • Good failures lead to learning. Bad failures are mistakes that we need to learn to prevent. Recognizing the distinction between good and bad failures is key to reaping rewards.
• This book also offers ways to reframe our thinking so that we no longer deem failures shameful. To do so, Edmonson goes over the different contexts in which failures can occur and the types of systems that can help us learn to fail well.
• Research on why pilots make mistakes hypothesized that fatigue leads to errors. However, the researchers found that fatigued teams performed better when fixing errors, because fatigued pilots had been working for longer periods of time with their teams. Hence they collaborated more effectively, correcting each other’s mistakes and communicating clearly.
• During her doctoral studies, Edmondson found that hospital teams that worked better made more errors. Upon closer examination, she discovered they didn’t make more errors but rather that they reported more errors. These findings led to her work on psychological safety, but also suggest that some failures are the right kind of wrong.
  • Psychological safety refers to an environment that allows people to experience comfort at a team level. Feeling psychologically safe lets people express themselves and voice concerns without worrying about punishment.
• If people deny errors, they can’t learn. Intelligent failures are necessary for innovation and the expansion of knowledge. Intelligent failures are not mistakes.
• Edmondson defines failure as an outcome that deviates from desired results. She defines errors and mistakes as unintended deviations from pre-specified standards (e.g., putting the cereal in the fridge and the milk in the cupboard). Violations are when people intentionally deviate from the rules.

Part I – The Failure Landscape

Chapter 1: Chasing the Right Kind of Wrong

• Three main reasons explain why failing well is challenging.
  • Aversion is an emotional response. Rationally, we know we are all going to fail at some point in our lives. We also know we can learn from failure. However, our emotions often keep us from acting rationally.
• We are prone to a negativity bias where we are more sensitive to negative information. We are also prone to loss aversion. We overweigh losses compared to equal wins. The pain of failing is stronger than the pleasure of succeeding.
• In order to avoid pain, we hide our mistakes or dodge blame, impeding learning.
• Because failure is natural and can even be beneficial, Edmondson believes organizations should make their settings psychologically safe to drive innovation.
• Research found that silver medalists in the Olympics experience more disappointment than bronze medalists. That’s because people who earned second place engage in counterfactual thinking (“what if” or “if only”). But third-place winners reframe their perspective from loss to gain: they are happy they earned a medal at all because they’re more aware of how easily they might have missed it.
• Reframing is necessary to fail well. It helps us overcome our aversion to failure.
  • Confusion stems from a lack of understanding that not all failures are the same. There are different types of failures and differences in contexts matter. These are covered in greater detail in the subsequent chapters, but the three types of contexts are consistent (having prior knowledge that allows for routines), novel (pioneering), and variable (the knowledge exists but something unexpected happens).
• Different organizational contexts impact the types of failures. And there is a correlation between context and failure type.
  • Fear comes from an association between failing and social stigma or rejection. Such fear often keeps us from voicing our opinions or concerns. We don’t want to take interpersonal risks, so we end up not talking about failures and inhibiting learning.
• The remedy is psychological safety. Only when employees (or our kids) aren’t afraid of social rejection will they talk about failures and pursue them intelligently.
• Leaders have asked Edmondson that if they don’t hold their teams accountable for their failures, how can they ensure that they do their best work? She explains that these concerns come from a false dichotomy where psychological safety appears as permissiveness. But a culture that promotes talk about failures can coexist with high standards (see the grid below).

The Relationship between Psychological Safety and Standards in Failure Science (p. 39)

• Learning happens when people are challenged and feel psychologically safe to experiment.
• Edmondson provides a hypothetical spectrum of reasons for failure (see below) and explains that organizations should define which are blameworthy and which are praiseworthy. She asks people to draw a line and determine the percentage of failures that are blameworthy. In her experience, most people say up to 2%. But when asked how many failures are treated as blameworthy, they responded between 70 and 90%.
  • The gap between the rational assessment and the spontaneous response to failure is that failures are hidden, which limits learning and can lead to catastrophes.

A Spectrum of Causes of Failure (p. 41)

Chapter 2: Eureka!

• We should praise intelligent failures because they are key to discoveries. Mistakes happen when we don’t use the knowledge that already exists.
• There are four attributes of intelligent failures:

1. 1. They happen in a new territory. Whatever the domain, you’re in a new territory if you lack information and you’re moving away from what’s familiar. There’s a lot of uncertainty.
   2. They are driven by meaningful opportunities and are advancing toward a valued goal.
   3. They are informed by prior knowledge so you’re preparing accordingly (“doing your homework”).

• • • Failing to prepare is often the result of the “fail fast” mantra that overemphasizes action and does not account for preparation.

1. 4. They are relatively small while providing valuable insights.

• Failures can waste time and resources, and impact reputations. To mitigate these consequences, we can experiment privately. We also need to learn to shut down the project when it is clear it isn’t working.
• As a leader, to keep failures small, you can rely on pilot tests. Run the pilot under a typical circumstance, make sure the goal is to learn (focus on failing), ensure compensation doesn’t depend on success, and make explicit changes to the project based on what you learn.
• To learn from this type of failure, confront the facts rationally. Avoid being superficial in your analysis (e.g., “It didn’t work. I’ll try something else.”)
• Instead of a bias to action, seek a bias to iteration. Progress requires repetition. Learning from failure can manifest in the form of multiple people building on each other’s failures or over a short period of time. But in both cases, iterative failures inform success.
• Common attributes among those who Edmondson describes as failure practitioners are:
  • Curiosity: They are flexible and curious. They can let go of an idea and adapt to a new line of inquiry.
  • Fearlessness: They are brave and explore new avenues. They take smart risks.
  • Embrace failure: They experiment, are willing to learn, and become friends with failure. They are motivated to solve problems and progress in their craft.

Chapter 3: To Err Is Human

• There are basic failures that we often commit because of inattention, assumptions, overconfidence, or neglect. These failures happen in familiar territory and are largely preventable.
  • E.g., Pilots usually go over a checklist to make sure everything is turned on and off appropriately in the cockpit. On one occasion (in 1982), during a freezing cold day, a captain and first officer went over a checklist. Because they were used to warm climates, their checklist would routinely call for the anti-ice instrument to be off. They went over the list habitually, didn’t stop and think, and turned the anti-icer off. The consequences were catastrophic, as the plane crashed in the Potomac River shortly after takeoff, killing all aboard.
• While we can’t get rid of human error, we can learn to prevent and minimize basic failures.
• Two main characteristics make up basic failures:

1. 1. They happen in known territory.
   2. There’s a single cause (complex errors are when a series of unfortunate events appear to line up; they are covered in Chapter 4).

• The human drivers of basic failures are:

1. 1. Inattention: Mistakes due to a lack of attention are among the most common. E.g., the CDC reports that 1/3 of US adults do not get enough sleep. And 40% of highway accidents are identified as caused by human fatigue.

• • • As you identify an inattention mistake and begin analyzing causes, don’t stop at a simple source. A tired worker might have led to the basic failure, but an organization’s bad scheduling might be the root cause.

1. 2. Neglect: These are usually basic failures due to things that we let build up over time as we keep putting things off, whether because we’re forgetful or busy.
   3. Overconfidence: Sometimes a basic failure happens when we don’t stop and think about the consequences of a decision. Other times, we just forget to prepare and go over available information. Finally, sometimes we ignore experts or signs.
   4. Assumptions: We don’t often realize when we assume things, so we don’t challenge our thoughts. Assumptions that come from poor logic or bad evidence lead to basic failures.

• To prevent basic failures, try not to focus on the external events that resulted in the mistake. Focus on what you might have done differently.
  • This is not easy to do, as our aversion to failure makes us engage in the fundamental attribution error: when others fail, we attribute the cause to their personality or ability. When we fail, we find reasons to justify ourselves.
• To reduce basic failures in your life, accept human fallibility. Be honest and good-humored about mistakes, nurturing psychological safety. Seek to acknowledge your contributions to failures. If you’re in a leadership position, establish a routine for reducing error and putting safety first.
  • E.g., at Toyota, employees are not reprimanded for reporting errors. They’re thanked and recognized. This helps catch bigger mistakes before they compound and ensures safety in high-risk environments.
• To learn from basic failure, you must study why a mistake resulted in loss. E.g., if you’re learning chess, you won’t improve if you play over and over and don’t stop to think how you can improve and what were your specific mistakes.
• Edmondson recommends prevention systems. Blameless reporting in organizations can help people feel more comfortable speaking up. The U.S. Air Force has a policy that goes even further, punishing people for not reporting problems promptly.
• Preventive maintenance is another way to reduce basic failures. Temporal discounting is our tendency to devalue outcomes that will happen in the future. E.g., changing a car’s oil. Be sure to set up a reminder or something similar that can help you prevent these types of failures.
• Highly organized people set processes and codify their lives. This is a good practice to help boost efficiency, prevent error, and avoid waste. E.g., checklists that you consciously
• In your organization, failure can also be prevented through continual training (not just on a given task but in leadership, communication, awareness, etc.)
• Thinking of the child-proof caps, common in medication bottles, seek to fail-proof aspects of your life and work. According to Don Norman, it is a matter of design. Be creative. E.g., keep an umbrella in your car if you know you’re prone to forgetting it.

Chapter 4: The Perfect Storm

• Britain’s biggest oil spill, a tragedy known as the Torrey Canyon, is an example of a complex failure where one cannot identify one sole cause. Many things that coincidentally add up, result in a failure that could have been avoided or lessened had one of those things not happened.
• While complex failures are not the right kind of wrong, they aren’t blameworthy either. Yet, our reflex to blame others is universal. And that’s why, when psychological safety is lacking, a CEO gets fired when the whole company underperforms.
  • This tendency is particularly problematic because, when we assign blame on one individual, we don’t spend time analyzing what really happened and deciphering how to do better in the future.
• Some attributes of complex failures include:

1. 1. They happen in familiar settings where there is access to prior knowledge or experience. Yet it’s this familiarity that leads to harm. We feel in control and become overconfident.
   2. They are multicausal; they have more than one cause, and these can be both internal and external factors interacting and compounding.
   3. They often come with warning signs that we miss, ignore, or under weigh.

• Edmondson argues that one of the most obvious causes of complex failures relates to information technology and how it has permeated into every aspect of life and work. Social media, for instance, allows for the quick dissemination of information, exacerbating and amplifying its negative effects, such as on mental health. There’s a digitization of massive amounts of information. And smart systems communicate independently.
  • COVID-19, she argues, is an example of how interconnectedness spreads the impact of small failures globally.
• High reliability organizations are those that are reliably safe because everyone feels responsible for their practices and consistently catch and correct deviations to prevent errors. These companies have the following practices in common. They:

1. 1. Learn from past complex failures. It’s important to perform thorough investigations after complex failures occur so that we can change regulations and training.
   2. Pay attention to warnings. Reducing complex failures starts with paying attention to ambiguous threats because we tend to downplay them. Self-awareness is key to learning how to notice early warnings, and to actively seek disconfirming data.
   3. Leverage the recovery window. Before a complex failure happens, there’s a window of opportunity for recovery. It can last minutes or months. But this is a moment to take corrective action. Whether we do or do not depends greatly on people’s willingness to speak up; that is, psychological safety.
   4. Welcome false alarms. Organizations shouldn’t perceive false alarms as a waste of time or resources. Welcoming them increases psychological safety, and false alarms can still teach us about how things might go wrong. To counter our tendency not to speak unless we’re 100% sure, we need to appreciate it when others voice concerns. The idea is to reinforce the behavior to avert serious accidents.
   5. Think beyond. Foster a culture of vigilance. As a leader, if someone’s voice is overrepresented, make sure you ask others for their views and opinions about how to address a warning sign.

Part II – Practicing the Science of Failing Well

Chapter 5: We Have Met the Enemy

• Referring to Ray Dalio’s early experience with Bridgewater Associates, where he called the macroeconomic environment wrong and lost a lot of money on a big market bet, Edmondson argues that taking small risks is essential to failing intelligently. As adults, it’s sometimes hard to tell if we’re wrong about something because humility and curiosity don’t come naturally.
  • We tend to engage in confirmation biases where we pay attention to confirming evidence and disregard disconfirming information.
  • We also have difficulty admitting when we’re wrong (whether consciously or not).
• Because we’re not naturally inclined to consciously deal with failure, we have to learn.
  • Sometimes, we don’t notice when we fail. Again, confirmation bias makes us more aware of confirming information.
  • Other times, we opt for an easier route to cognition, where we process failures fast, limiting our ability to fully learn from mistakes. This is often the result of the amygdala triggering our “fight or flight” response. But we can learn to override it.
  • Prepared fears are those that cause reactions when we hear loud noises or sudden movements. Among them is our fear of rejection, especially from an authority figure. This is most likely the result of our survival instincts, as, in the past, being expelled from a tribe could have meant death. Today, it leads to hiding failures from our boss.
• A typical response to fear is not paying attention and tuning out. Research shows that this is a way to protect our egos. It also suggests that we’re very good at learning from other’s failures. The problem is that if we don’t hear about their failures, nobody learns from them.
• Brené Brown is an expert in shame, vulnerability, and empathy. She distinguishes shame and guilt by the focus of their attributions. Guilt focuses on actions and shame on our whole selves (e.g., guilt stems from “I did something bad” and shame from “I am bad”). Because of that, guilt leads to reparative behaviors and accountability, and shame leads to withdrawal.
  • Edmondson proposes reframing failure so that it leads to accountability and not a tendency to hide our mistakes.
  • In an era of social media, our natural tendency to learn through social comparison has increasingly become maladaptive, as we compare ourselves to unrealistic standards. Edmondson suggests this has resulted in a bigger tendency to hide failure. Instead, she suggests that we should embrace vulnerability.
• Because we view reality through the lens of our cognitive frames, the first skill we need to learn to take advantage of our failures is And to reframe failure, we must learn to pause and challenge automatic responses.
  • Edmondson refers to Carol Dweck’s work on the growth mindset to showcase the importance of learning to reframe our cognitive views.
  • Chris Argyris also proposed another set of opposing frames that are important to distinguish in order to learn from failures. He proposed two models. In Model 1, our thinking wants to control the situation, so we make assumptions to appear rational. In Model 2, the basis of our thinking is curiosity. True learning becomes easier.
  • A third frame to consider is from Maxie Maultsby, who distinguishes rational and irrational beliefs. Beliefs impact our behavior, so a good habit to foster is questioning our beliefs.
    • Our beliefs also impact our emotions. Maultsby believed we can learn to control our thoughts to make ourselves happier and healthier. His main argument was that how we think about an event matters more than the event itself. All we need to do is pause and challenge our assumptions.
  • Larry Wilson proposed the Stop–Challenge–Choose practice. Stop for a minute, take a breath, challenge your immediate reactions by thinking through what’s guiding them, and then choose the appropriate response. Based on this, Edmondson adds that, in the face of failure, we should choose learning.

Chapter 6: Contexts and Consequences

• Electric Maze is a game where people decipher a path through a mat that has beeping and non-beeping squares. Without talking to each other and simply observing their teammates, each person takes a turn to figure out a way through without activating beeping squares. When a beep is triggered, it’s the next player’s turn.
  • Edmondson suggests that the easiest way to win this game under a 20-min mark is to go through failure as fast as possible, discovering what are the beeping squares. The problem is, due to our aversion to failure, most players hesitate too much before taking a step, letting time go to waste.
  • In the same way, in novel contexts, it’s irrational to feel embarrassed if we activate some beeps (small failures) as we move forward. Small failures teach.
  • The main problem in this game, and often in real life, is that we misconstrue the context. The maze is new for everyone. It requires experimentation. But we react emotionally.
• Uncertainty is an opportunity for discovery, but it’s also risky. The benefit of pausing to assess contexts is that doing so can inform us if we are in a crucial or not-so-crucial moment. After all, failures are often more emotionally painful than necessary.
• There are two main dimensions of context to assess: how much we know (degree of uncertainty) and what’s at stake (risk – physical, financial, reputational, human, etc.).
• Under the uncertainty dimension, there are three types of contexts:

1. 1. In this context, we don’t tend to worry about our ability to accomplish our goal. The problem is that we might get too comfortable and overconfident, or we might treat a problem as consistent when in actuality it falls under variable or novel contexts.
   2. In this context, we have knowledge and ability, but the situation needs us to thoughtfully adjust our actions to what’s happening (e.g., hospitals). We aren’t free of uncertainty, but we have the ability to navigate the situation.
   3. In this context, we have no guarantees. Everything is new. Things are likely not going to work the first time.

• Under the risk dimension, there are two levels: low-stakes or high-stakes consequences. When the stakes are low, have fun experimenting. When stakes are high, approach the situation with mindfulness, caution, and care. The key is to take the time to assess the risk to avoid misconstruing it and either engage in excessive and unnecessary vigilance or put people at risk.
• The grid below depicts the scenarios that stem from context and risk:

Navigating Context Type Based on What’s at Stake (p. 211).

• Lack of situational awareness can lead to preventable failures.

1. 1. When we underestimate danger, we work automatically and unconsciously. Sometimes we are in a familiar situation but don’t pause to assess that it is also dangerous.
   2. When we underestimate variability, it’s easy to under weigh unpredictability. This often happens when companies move into a new market without doing proper research.
   3. When we underestimate novelty, we don’t realize the degree of complexity we face. Referencing the HealthCare.gov initial launch, Edmondson exemplifies how we can misconstrue a context as familiar (e.g., “it’s just a website”) without realizing the amount of work and changes necessary to succeed (e.g., launching a massive two-sided portal that was particularly innovative).

• With more uncertainty, the likelihood of failure increases. The type of failure also tends to differ accordingly.

1. 1. In predictable contexts, we often generate basic failures.
   2. In variable contexts, complex failures are more common.
   3. In novel contexts, failure is inevitable and often intelligent.
      • We can generate intelligent failures in consistent contexts or basic failures in novel contexts. Every possible combination that falls outside the three categories above are off-diagonal failures. Context awareness is crucial to preventing them.

Chapter 7: Appreciating Systems

• System awareness and how it relates to unwanted failures is key to learning and understanding how to fail well. Systems are made up of parts that relate to one another and make up a whole (e.g., family systems, ecosystems, school systems, sports teams, etc.).
• Overspecialization has limited our ability to understand how most systems work. Yet assessing a system’s relationships helps avoid complex failures. That is, understanding how a system’s parts impact each other, and trying to find vulnerabilities, can help prevent failure.
  • Ask yourself, “Who or what else is affected by this?” and “If we do this, what might happen in the future?”
  • Learning to recognize connections between parts lets us see how to alter the parts of a system and can reduce failures in a way that promotes innovation, safety, efficiency, and our ultimate goal.
• In the 1960s, Jay Forrester (MIT professor) developed Beer Game, which teaches us to see systems and learn how relationships work in a way that can often lead to unintended results. In this game of supply chain systems, each team player makes a rational decision to minimize costs but fails to realize the impact it has on their teammates’ roles (as they cannot talk to each other). Combined, each rational decision ends up in wasteful cost overruns.
  • At a greater scale, this phenomenon happens in real life and leads to mass layoffs or company bankruptcies. The cause of the failure is that we try to optimize our own part of the system and don’t consider how our actions impact others.
  • The game also teaches that faulty assumptions such as, “If we all optimize our own performance, the team will do well,” can result in unexpected failures.
• Temporal discounting makes us downplay the importance and associated risks of events that will happen in the future. We also tend not to pause and consider how our decisions impact others. To overcome this factor, we need to practice system thinking, where we not only focus on the “here and now” but also on the “elsewhere and later.”
• Another tendency that we should be wary of is engaging in short-term solutions that ultimately exacerbate problems. This happens because we tend to think of relationships as X causes and Y, without noticing how Y can impact Z.
  • In her research in hospital settings, Edmondson noticed that simple-fix dynamics or workarounds to a problem lead to making the system even worse. E.g., nurses who ran out of linens before finishing their rounds would often take some from another unit. They wouldn’t solve the root cause of the problem and, while they might have fixed their own circumstance, they only send the problem to another nurse or unit.
  • Edmondson found that this type of workarounds caused “hero feelings” that resulted in the lessening of motivation to engage in second-order problem-solving (that is, dealing with the root cause so that the problem wouldn’t happen again).
  • To avoid this risk, Edmondson suggests redrawing the boundaries of a system so that we can identify other factors that impact our results.
• Disconnectedness between management and front-line workers often leads to avoidable failures. Leaders can make changes in one part of a system that makes sense to them without realizing the unintended consequences in another part of the system.
  • E.g., a pharmaceutical company was trying to improve teamwork among employees because they knew it would lead to innovation. However, management had a performance review system where employees were ranked from best to worst, a method that thwarted collaboration.
• System thinking leads to better system design. In an organization where innovation is crucial, the system should normalize intelligent failures and celebrate pivots. (E.g., Post-Its were created at 3M after a failed attempt at developing an aircraft adhesive. A pivot like that could only occur at a company like 3M, as it fostered experimentation and adjustment).
  • In an organization where safety is paramount, the system should foster ways of learning so that risk is reduced (e.g., hospitals need to diminish failure while improving patient care).
• Assumptions and frames are factors that we can change within a system to reduce failure. If you’re in a context where things are likely to go wrong due to variability, a good assumption to embrace is that there’s not one person to blame but a whole system (e.g., hospitals).

1. 1. Ask everyone involved in the system for feedback. You can consider blameless reporting where people are free to speak about error without consequences.
   2. New language. To help your team shift their blaming tendency and instead focus on learning, changing language might help. For instance, instead of words that have a threatening connotation (e.g., “launch an investigation”), use neutral-sounding terms (e.g., “conduct a study”).
   3. A system works well when it generates elements of its own. That happens when collaboration is fostered. At Children’s Hospital, nurses implemented a Good Cath Log, where they celebrated near misses and documented them so that later they could identify additional opportunities for improvement.

• “Mastering system awareness starts with training yourself to look for wholes rather than zooming in, as we naturally do, on the parts. It’s about expanding your focus […] to redraw the boundaries and see a larger whole and the relationships that shape it” (p. 257).

Chapter 8: Thriving as a Fallible Human Being

• To thrive, we need to accept that we are fallible. Once we become comfortable with our fallibility (understanding it as part of who we are), we feel free to learn. With that, learning to fail well becomes easier. We learn to prevent basic failures, anticipate complex ones, and cultivate an appetite for intelligent failures.
• Taking from Daniel Pink, an expert in regret, Edmondson argues that we don’t regret failures as much as not taking a chance. Knowing this can help us work on our aversion to failure.
• From Thomas Curran, Edmondson also suggests that perfectionism and excessive self-criticism result in difficulty with experimentation. Seeking perfection keeps us from tolerating failure and limits our capacity to thrive. Instead, we should aim for excellence (achieving realistic goals).
• Once we accept our fallibility, we need to embrace it. With that, we can choose to take appropriate risks and fail more often.
  • To feel more comfortable failing often, a good strategy is to learn a new hobby. It should be something difficult enough but also stimulating, and in a low-stakes context.
• Jake Breeden (from Takeda, a pharmaceutical company) argued that celebrating failure can be unrealistic because the word implies a negative ending. Instead, he recommends using the word “pivot.” Celebrating pivots is easier.
• The following practices can help foster a healthy relationship with failure:

1. 1. Persistence. Angela Duckworth, an expert in grit, found that perseverance and passion for a long-term goal predict achievement. She also found that sustained effort over time is a better predictor of success than IQ. So, persistence is key.

• • • While persistence through failure is necessary to thrive, we must be careful not to become stubborn. Sometimes, we waste resources and time following something that’s clearly not working. Part of failing well requires us to recognize when it is time to pivot or to give up entirely.
    • To determine if we need to be persistent or give up, we need to find an argument demonstrating the value of our goal and how it is worthy of continued investment of time and resources.

1. 2. Reflection. Whenever we fail, rather than pretending it didn’t happen, we need to dig in and learn. We should invest time in deliberate, honest reflection about our behaviors and their contributions to our failure.
   3. Accountability. We should also take responsibility for our failures (without wallowing in shame). Rather than blaming others, recognize what your role in the failure was, however small, and take accountability so that you learn from it and create better systems that prevent future errors.
   4. Saying “sorry.” Take the opportunity to apologize. You will repair the damaged relationship and even improve it. The attributes of an effective apology are expressing clear remorse, taking responsibility, and offering amends.

• • • Genuine apologies in the workplace also help build climates where employees feel psychologically safe to voice concerns and share errors.
    • At a larger scale, effective public apologies should also express remorse, show accountability, and make amends. E.g., after the failed HealthCare.gov first attempt, Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius apologized. President Barack Obama also acknowledged his role in the failure. With that, a lot of people stepped in to help and make the next website launch a success.
• Sharing our mistakes helps progress and innovation. If we bury intelligent failures, others will repeat them, and we’ll all become inefficient at solving a problem. The key to thriving is sharing failures along with what we learned from them.
• A healthy failure culture rewards intelligent failures, acknowledging their role in innovation. Ultimately, if we don’t fail intelligently, we don’t learn and we don’t innovate. And no organization can last long without constant innovation.
• The science of failing well is not always easy or fun. But it leads to discoveries. The key is discernment, to diagnose situations and systems, develop self-awareness, acknowledge shortcomings, build wisdom, and grow.