University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
Right Kind of Wrong
Book

Right Kind of Wrong

The Science of Failing Well

Amy Edmondson
Atria Books, 2023
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Editorial Rating

10

Qualities

  • Applicable
  • Concrete Examples
  • Engaging

Recommendation

James Joyce wrote that “a man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.” Indeed, learning to fail well is a vital skill, writes Amy Edmondson, a leadership professor at Harvard Business School. Once people feel safe enough to fail, explains Edmondson, they can capitalize on failure to drive learning, innovation and growth. Edmondson’s fresh, applicable guide, replete with real-life examples, will help you develop self-acceptance and self-awareness, while tapping into the freedom that comes from approaching your failures with humility and curiosity. 

Summary

To fail well, you must first accept failure as a part of learning and innovation.

Failing triggers emotional, cognitive and social discomfort: Failure stings your ego, causing emotional distress; it arouses confusion due to the absence of a mental framework to process and comprehend the failure; and it generates a fear of social stigma. While you might rationally understand that failure is a natural and unavoidable part of life, failing is nevertheless painful due to two human foibles: “negativity bias,” an inclination to hold on to negative feelings much longer than positive feelings, and “loss aversion,” a tendency to overestimate the weight of a loss and underestimate the weight of an equivalent gain. 

While an antipathy to failure is normal, being failure-averse will, ironically, increase your likelihood of failure. Small problems become bigger problems when you’re dishonest with yourself and leave them unaddressed. Within many organizational cultures, failure is unequivocally unacceptable. Yet this doesn’t mean that people stop making mistakes: They...

About the Author

Amy Edmondson is a leadership and management professor at Harvard Business School. She has written several books, including The Fearless Organization and Teaming.

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