S3E16: The Science of Failing Well with Amy Edmondson

Paint & Pipette: The Art & Science of Innovation

In today’s world, we’re caught between two failure cultures. One tells us that it must be avoided at all costs, while the other tells us to "fail fast” and often. The issue is that both approaches lack the necessary distinctions to help us separate good failure from bad. Today, we’re joined by author, scholar, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, and champion of psychological safety, Amy Edmondson, who believes that we need to reframe our understanding of failure and discover what it means to “fail well.” In this episode, we discuss her latest book, The Right Kind of Wrong, and gain some insight into the inherent relationships between organizational learning and change management, psychological safety and innovation, and failure and the creative process. Tuning in, you’ll learn when to quit, when to experiment, and how to measure your failure performance, plus you’ll also hear some remarkable stories that illustrate what it means to be a hero of failure! Believe it or not, there is a science to failing well, and Amy Edmundson is here to provide us with a practical framework to think, discuss, and practice failure wisely.

Key Points From This Episode:

• Amy’s roots in organizational learning and the journey her career has taken since.
• The NYT article that put her studies of psychological safety on the global map.
• A look at the relationship between psychological safety and idea generation.
• Cultivating the idea of failure as input rather than outcome: it’s part of the process!
• What we can learn from “failure heroes” like Thomas Edison and Buckminster Fuller.
• How to know when you should quit and when you should persist.
• The playfulness and willingness to experiment that comes with being a hero of failure.
• Failure diagnostics: practical ways to measure your failure performance.
• What it takes to be excruciatingly present, why context is shaped by the level of uncertainty, and more from our lightning round with Amy!
• Insight into Amy’s creative process, which starts with a whole lot of conceptualizing.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Amy Edmondson

Right Kind of Wrong

Teaming

The Fearless Organization

Amy Edmondson on LinkedIn

Amy Edmondson on X

Thinkers50

Richard Hackman

'What Google Learned in Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team'

Quit

IDEO

Only the Paranoid Survive

American Icon

The Widow Clicquot

Jeremy Utley

Jeremy Utley Email

Jeremy Utley on X

Jeremy Utley on LinkedIn