Book SummaryRight Kind of Wrong, by Amy Edmondson

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Right Kind of Wrong

Many people view failure as shameful or painful, and try to avoid it at all costs. However, Amy Edmondson’s Right Kind of Wrong offers a more balanced perspective: Failures are inevitable, and they can be essential stepping stones toward future successes. She argues that failures have been crucial to scientific discoveries, technological advancements, and individual achievements because the people who made them were willing to take risks and learn from their missteps. With the right mindset and tools, you too can transform defeats and shortcomings into innovations and personal growth.

Edmondson is a professor at Harvard Business School, where she earned her doctorate in organizational behavior. She specializes in [teamwork and psychological...

Right Kind of Wrong Summary Recognizing That It’s Safe to Fail

To begin, Edmondson says that turning setbacks into opportunities for innovation and growth requires you to embrace the idea that failures—which she defines as results that differ from the desired outcome—are inevitable, and usually aren’t cause for shame or punishment. In short, she urges you to cultivate psychological safety regarding failure: the idea that failures should be freely shared and discussed for the common good, rather than hidden out of embarrassment or fear.

In this section, we’ll discuss how you can develop a mindset of embracing failure, and how you can help to create an organizational culture that welcomes failures as learning opportunities.

Personal: Developing a “Fail-Safe” Mindset

Edmondson begins by saying that a crucial part of personal growth and success is not just accepting, but embracing your fallibility. In other words, it’s not enough to rationally understand that you’ll sometimes make mistakes—you must also come to terms emotionally with the idea that you’re an imperfect human being, and that’s OK. To help you achieve this shift in mindset, the author suggests several skills you can develop to start building a healthier...

Right Kind of Wrong Summary The Importance of Context

Edmondson’s discussion of creating an environment where it’s safe to fail comes with one crucial caveat: Sometimes it’s not safe to fail. Therefore, it’s important to evaluate the context you’re working in. This will help you determine the appropriate level of caution for your situation so that you can avoid genuinely harmful mistakes and encourage productive, educational failures. The author urges you to consider two factors relevant to your situation—the level of unpredictability and the level of risk—and find the appropriate balance between caution and experimentation based on your analysis.

Context Factor #1: The Level of Unpredictability

The first factor to consider is the level of unpredictability in what you’re doing. Edmondson presents a range of levels of uncertainty:

• Stable contexts are situations with well-established procedures and predictable outcomes, like following a recipe or completing simple, routine tasks.
• Volatile contexts are familiar situations, but they still require adaptation and flexibility. Examples include teaching a class and practicing medicine.
• New contexts are situations that don’t have established playbooks or...

Right Kind of Wrong Summary Study Your Failures to Learn From Them

Now that you’ve created an environment—personal, organizational, or both—where it’s safe to fail, you’re ready to start turning those setbacks into the building blocks of future successes.

Edmondson’s process for learning from failure involves much more than just asking what went wrong and what you can do better next time. She says you must carefully study your failures, gather specific details about them, and develop a deep understanding of what went wrong. Only then will you be ready to decide how to respond to the situation and learn how to avoid similar problems in the future.

In this section we’ll go over the types of failures Edmondson identifies: intelligent failures, simple failures, and complex failures. Next, we’ll share Edmondson’s principle that all failures exist on a spectrum ranging from deserving blame to deserving praise. Finally, we’ll discuss common psychological barriers that prevent people from learning from their mistakes.

Types of Failure

Edmondson divides failures into three categories, each with its own qualities and corrective methods:

Type #1: Intelligent Failures

The first category is what the author calls ***intelligent...

Shortform Exercise: Evaluate a Past Failure

Now that you’re familiar with Edmondson’s methods for examining and learning from past failures, try applying her principles to a failure that you’ve recently suffered.

What’s one failure you’ve recently experienced?