“Right Kind Of Wrong” By Amy Edmondson: The Best Business Book Of The Year
The mantra "fail fast, fail often" is celebrated in Silicon Valley to encourage exploration. However, celebrating failure in critical professions like surgery or aviation isn't as straightforward. How can teams harness the potential of the “right” kind of failures?
Harvard Professor Amy Edmondson's latest work, "Right Kind of Wrong," has achieved notable acclaim by winning the Financial Times Award for Best Business Book of 2023. Additionally, Edmondson has earned the top spot in business and management from the global Thinkers50 award. Prof. Edmondson's research focuses on leveraging the potential of failure, a concept central to her book's exploration of psychological safety and its role in enhancing team performance.
So, how to separate the “right” kind of failure from the “wrong” one?
Prof. Edmondson emphasises that understanding failures requires contextualisation: not all failures are intelligent, that is, resulting from venturing into the new territory. Sometimes, we fall pray to basic failures and more complex failures occurring in familiar contexts, when something or everything goes wrong.
Concerned that promoting a culture of failure might result in poor team performance?
Failures, when disclosed in an environment of low psychological safety, can escalate due to fear and reluctance to admit errors. Establishing a climate of psychological safety within teams not only helps prevent avoidable failures but also fosters the pursuit of intelligent failures, allowing for new challenges with less fear.
Prof. Edmondson argues that a high-performance environment can coexist with a climate of psychological safety. The real danger lies in maintaining high standards in an environment lacking psychological safety, which is leading people to conceal mistakes and avoid any risks.
Becoming a master of intelligent failure, as suggested Prof. Edmondson, involves fostering genuine curiosity and a desire to understand issues. To experiment fearlessly, individuals must come to embrace vulnerability, tolerate risks, and befriend the right kind of failures.
By creating psychologically safe environments while maintaining high standards, your enable your teams to overcome interpersonal fears and explore new territories beyond their safety zones.