Right Kind of Wrong Quotes

“It’s not easy to recognize, in real time, when you’re throwing good money after bad—which is why I think analyzing progress should be a “team sport.” You have to be willing to solicit input from people who have different perspectives on the project. To overcome the “sunk costs” fallacy, this helps to change the default incentive (to keep going) so people can feel good about saying it’s time to stop. Astro Teller, head of the radical innovation company called X at Alphabet (Google’s parent company), gives failure bonuses to employees who admit a project isn’t working.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“Shutting down projects as soon as it’s clear they are not working is another way innovators limit failure’s size and cost.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“Because failures consume time and resources, you’re smart to use both judiciously. Failures can also threaten reputations. One way to mitigate the reputational cost of failure is to experiment behind closed doors. If you’ve ever tried on a bold new style of clothing to see if it suits you, you probably did it behind the curtain of a store’s changing area. Similarly, most innovation departments and scientific labs are private, with scientists and product designers trying all sorts of crazy things without an audience.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“Human beings are curious by nature, but over time we are at risk of losing our drive to understand new things. And it’s hard to learn if you already know. That’s why outsiders to any existing system (a family, a company, a country) bring such a valuable new lens. They know that they don’t know!”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“Intelligent failures begin with preparation. No scientist wants to waste time or materials on experiments that have been run before and failed. Do your homework. The classic intelligent failure is hypothesis driven. You’ve taken the time to think through what might happen—why you have reason to believe that you could be right about what will happen.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“Play is integral to the spirit of intelligent failure. It doesn’t always have to sting.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“An intelligent failure occurs as part of what you believe is a meaningful opportunity to advance toward a valued goal.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“A bonus attribute is that the failure’s lessons are learned and used to guide next steps.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“What makes a failure qualify as intelligent? Here are four key attributes: it takes place in new territory; the context presents a credible opportunity to advance toward a desired goal (whether that be scientific discovery or a new friendship); it is informed by available knowledge (one might say “hypothesis driven”); and finally the failure is as small as it can be to still provide valuable insights.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“That the protein failed to bind on double-stranded DNA when it had succeeded in binding on single-stranded RNA was not, however, a “silly mistake.” It was the undesired result of a hypothesis-driven experiment. A failure, yes, but an intelligent failure—and an inevitable part of the fascinating work of science. Most important, that failure would inform the next experiment.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“Mistakes are deviations from known practices. Mistakes happen when knowledge about how to achieve a certain result already exists but isn’t used.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“Salt helps RNA fold. What if he experimented with depriving the RNA of salt? This didn’t work either. Steve was disappointed. But not devastated, as he might have been had Jen not worked so hard to create an environment in the lab where the focus is on learning and discovery. As she explains, “High-performing individuals aren’t used to making mistakes. It’s important to learn to laugh at ourselves or we’ll err on the side of being too afraid to try.” Her passion for the central role embracing failure plays in science research has led Heemstra to write about how students, and especially women, can easily be discouraged from pursuing careers in science, stating in a tweet, “The only people who never make mistakes and never experience failure are those who never try.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“Failure is a part of science rather than a judgment,” she says. Her warm, open smile threatens to burst from the confines of the small screen. She likes to tell her lab students, “We’re going to fail all day.” Heads of scientific labs need to normalize failure, she explains. Estimating that experiments fail 95 percent of the time, Jen adds, “Nine out of ten times people beat themselves up unnecessarily.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“I’ve conducted the following thought experiment with audiences around the world: “Take a look at the Blameworthy–Praiseworthy spectrum: Which of the potential causes of failure do you consider blameworthy?” Answers to this question vary. Some will say only sabotage can be considered blameworthy. Others will chime in that inattention should be as well. Pushing back on that, others immediately recognize that people might have been put in difficult situations where becoming distracted was not their fault. It doesn’t matter to me where you draw the line. What matters is that you draw it and then contemplate your answer to the next question: “What percent of the failures in your organization or family can be considered blameworthy?” I’ve found that most people, when they think about it carefully, arrive at a small number: perhaps, 1 to 2 percent. I then ask the most important question: “How many of these failures are treated as blameworthy by those who matter in your organization or life?” Here, people will say (after a rueful pause or a laugh) 70 percent to 90 percent. Or, sometimes, “All of them!” The unfortunate consequence of this gap between a rational assessment of fault and the spontaneous response of those in charge is that failures—in our lives, households, and workplaces—are too often hidden. This is one of the ways we lose access to failure’s lessons.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“It’s not just your own learning from failure that matters; it’s also your willingness to share those lessons with others.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“I’d go so far as to say that insisting on high standards without psychological safety is a recipe for failure—and not the good kind. People are more likely to mess up (even for things they know how to do well) when they’re stressed. Similarly, when you have a question about how to do something but don’t feel able to ask someone, you’re at risk of running headlong into a basic failure. Also, when people encounter intelligent failures, they need to feel safe enough to tell other people about them. These useful failures are no longer “intelligent” when they happen a second time.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“fear inhibits learning. Research shows that fear consumes physiologic resources, diverting them from parts of the brain that manage working memory and process new information. In a word, learning. And that includes learning from failure. It is hard for people to do their best work when they’re afraid. It’s especially hard to learn from failure because doing so is a cognitively demanding task.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“Adding to our emotional aversion and cognitive confusion is a deep-rooted fear of looking bad in the eyes of others. This is more than just a preference. The fear induced by the risk of social rejection can be traced back to our evolutionary heritage when rejection could literally mean the difference between staying alive and dying of starvation or exposure.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“In addition to novel and consistent contexts, all of us frequently find ourselves in variable contexts—those moments in life when knowledge exists to handle that particular type of situation, but life throws you a curveball”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“Failures are more likely in novel than consistent contexts, so we don’t get upset about them, right? Wrong. Your amygdala—that small part of your brain responsible for activating a fight-or-flight response—detects a threat no matter the context. Relatedly, you might be surprised to discover that your negative emotional reaction to failures, regardless of the level of real danger, can be surprisingly similar.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“For instance, in some situations well-developed knowledge about how to achieve desired results makes routines and plans generally unfold as expected; for example, following a recipe to bake a cake or drawing patients’ blood in a phlebotomy lab. I call these consistent contexts. Other times you’re in brand-new territory—forced to try things to see what works. The pioneering cardiac surgeons we met at the start of this chapter were clearly in new terrain, and most of their failures were intelligent. Other examples of novel contexts include designing a new product or figuring out how to get protective masks to millions of people during a worldwide pandemic.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“Why did silver-medaling Olympic competitors in the study feel as if they’d failed, while their bronze-medaling counterparts felt a measure of success? Psychologists say it’s caused by “counterfactual thinking”—the human tendency to frame events in terms of “what if” or “if only.” The silver medalists, disappointed at not having won gold, framed their performance as a failure relative to winning gold. Those who came in third place framed the result as a success—they earned a medal at the Olympics! They were acutely aware of how easily they might have missed the chance to stand on the Olympic podium in glory and not come home with a medal at all. The bronze medalists had reframed their result—from a loss to a gain. That simple—and scientifically valid—reframe gave them joy instead of regret.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“Soccer star and Olympic gold medalist Abby Wambach points out that failure means you are “in the game.” In her 2018 commencement speech at Barnard College in New York, Wambach exhorted graduates to make failure their “fuel.” Failure, she explained, “is not something to be ashamed of, it’s something to be powered by. Failure is the highest-octane fuel your life can run on.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“Athletes in general possess a relatively enlightened understanding of failure’s relationship to success. As Canadian ice hockey superstar Wayne Gretzky famously said, “You miss one hundred percent of the shots you don’t take.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“Examining our failures carefully is emotionally unpleasant and chips away at our self-esteem. Left to our own devices, we will speed through or avoid failure analysis altogether.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“Sydney Finkelstein, a Dartmouth professor who studied major failures at over fifty companies, found that those higher in the management hierarchy were more likely to blame factors other than themselves compared to those with less power. Oddly, those with the most power seem to feel they have the least control. So much for the “buck stops here” thinking popularized by U.S. president Harry Truman.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“Failing well is hard for three reasons: aversion, confusion, and fear. Aversion refers to an instinctive emotional response to failure. Confusion arises when we lack access to a simple, practical framework for distinguishing failure types. Fear comes from the social stigma of failure.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly. —Robert F. Kennedy”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“violations occur when an individual intentionally deviates from the rules.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“I define failure as an outcome that deviates from desired results, whether that be failing to win a hoped-for gold medal, an oil tanker spilling thousands of tons of raw oil into the ocean instead of arriving safely in a harbor, a start-up that dives downward, or overcooking the fish meant for dinner. In short, failure is a lack of success. Next, I define errors (synonymous with mistakes) as unintended deviations from prespecified standards, such as procedures, rules, or policies.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well