How to fail successfully, with Amy Edmondson, PhD, and Samuel West, PhD
Speaking of Psychology
Episode Insights
See all- Psychological safety is crucial for organizations and teams to benefit from failure, encouraging an environment where taking risks and learning from mistakes is supported.
- Embracing failure is essential for learning and innovation, with three categorized types: basic failures (single preventable mistakes), complex failures (multicausal and often preventable), and intelligent failures (thoughtful, new territory attempts that provide valuable insights).
- The Museum of Failure highlights the natural part of failure in life and innovation, aiming to normalize it, showcase failed products, and emphasize learning from these experiences.
- Success often includes a history of failures, with attributes like curiosity, persistence, and self-awareness being key to overcoming and learning from these challenges.
- Children's approach to failure changes as societal pressures grow; fostering a learning orientation and celebrating effort can maintain their innate willingness to embrace and learn from failure.
- Silicon Valley's "fail fast" mentality is critiqued for not adequately learning from mistakes; intelligent risk-taking should minimize potential damage while still allowing for growth through experimental failures.
- The aversion to failure in personal and professional realms hinders progression, as sharing and learning from mistakes is essential for avoiding future errors and improving efficiency.
- Failure should not be feared but seen as an opportunity for curiosity and development, with individuals and organizations thriving when they acknowledge and learn from their failures.
- Success and failure are nuanced and context-dependent; no individual or organization is uniformly successful or unsuccessful, and both elements play parts in growth and learning.
- To utilize failures constructively, it is vital to differentiate among the types of failures, encouraging intelligent failures that spur learning while preventing basic, avoidable mistakes.