Right Kind of Wrong: The Science Of Failing Well

by Amy C Edmondson

Longlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year

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—basic, 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.

• Publish Date: 5 September 2023
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Atria Books
• Format: eBook (Kindle)
• Pages: 368
• Language: English

Reviews

[Jeff Sexton]

Well Documented Examination Of How To Make Failure Work *For* You. This is one of those organizational psychology/ self-help pop psychology books that is fortunately about as light on the psychobabble bullshit as such as a book can be, and instead focuses on the science of how to fail intelligently and how to mitigate, minimize, and learn from other failures as well - yes, even some of the most catastrophic failures of the past 50 years or so (where most of Edmondson's examples come from) can be at minimum learned from, and this is one of the large points of the text here. At roughly 30% documentation, it is on the higher end of average in my own experience, which is a great thing given all of the claims here. Organized into just a couple of handfuls of chapters, each built around explaining one of Edmondson's core principles, this is a book that will work well in any learning environment, from college level business education classes to corporate book clubs/ leadership retreats to personal self development. And it is in fact quite practical, with quite a few lessons that can be easily (or at least readily) applied in almost any situation that seems to be becoming SNAFU or even FUBAR. Very much recommended.