Right Kind of Wrong Quotes

“Good failures are those that bring us valuable new information that simply could not have been gained any other way.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“When a group is higher in psychological safety, it’s likely to be more innovative, do higher-quality work, and enjoy better performance, compared to a group that is low in psychological safety. One of the most important reasons for these different outcomes is that people in psychologically safe teams can admit their mistakes. These are teams where candor is expected. It’s not always fun, and certainly it’s not always comfortable, to work in such a team because of the difficult conversations you will sometimes experience. Psychological safety in a team is virtually synonymous with a learning environment in a team. Everyone makes mistakes (we are all fallible), but not everyone is in a group where people feel comfortable speaking up about them. And it’s hard for teams to learn and perform well without psychological safety.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“Psychological safety plays a powerful role in the science of failing well. It allows people to ask for help when they’re in over their heads, which helps eliminate preventable failures. It helps them report—and hence catch and correct—errors to avoid worse outcomes, and it makes it possible to experiment in thoughtful ways to generate new discoveries.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“These failures are “intelligent,” as my colleague Duke professor Sim Sitkin first suggested back in 1992, because they involve careful thinking, don’t cause unnecessary harm, and generate useful learning that advances our knowledge. Despite happy talk about celebrating failures in Silicon Valley and around the world, intelligent failures are the only type genuinely worth celebrating. Also referred to as smart failures or good failures, they occur most characteristically in science, where failure rates in a successful laboratory might be 70 percent or higher.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“Discovery stories don’t end with failure; failures are stepping stones on the way to success. There is no shortage of popular quotes on that point—many of them are sprinkled throughout this book—and for good reason. These kinds of informative, but still undesired, failures are the right kind of wrong.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. —Winston Churchill”
― Amy C. Edmondson, The Right Kind of Wrong

“As the comic strip character Pogo purportedly said, we have met the enemy and he is us. Our distorted, unrealistic expectations for avoiding all failures are indeed the culprit.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“Chris Argyris called this the uncovering of the non-learning theories-in-use, which protect our egos but get in the way of our being truly effective (especially in difficult conversations with others). Choose learning over knowing
The message is the same. Pause to challenge the automatic thoughts that cause you pain and embarrassment. Next, reframe those thoughts to allow you to choose learning over knowing. To look outward and find energy and joy from seeing what you missed. At the core of the reframing task lie the words we use to express our thoughts, privately and aloud. Am I failing, or am I discovering something new? Do I believe I should have done better—and I’m bad for not having done so—or do I accept what happened and learn as much as I can from it? Am I okay with the discomfort that comes with new experiences? Will I give myself permission to be human? Permission to learn?”
― Amy C. Edmondson, The Right Kind of Wrong

“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

“Admitting doubt in the face of uncertainty demonstrates strength rather than weakness.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“Psychological safety reduces the interpersonal barriers to failing well, so people can take on new challenges with less fear, such that we can try to succeed and walk away wiser when we don’t. That, I believe, is the right kind of wrong.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“psychological safety is especially helpful in settings where teamwork, problem-solving, or innovation are needed to get the job done.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“Every kind of failure brings opportunities for learning and improvement.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“When people work in psychologically safe contexts, they know that questions are appreciated, ideas are welcome, and errors and failure are discussable”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“Successful innovation is only possible as a result of insights from incremental losses along the way.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“Discovery stories don’t end with failure; failures are stepping stones on the way to success”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

“Note that healthy attributions about failure not only stay balanced and rational, they also take account of the ways—small or large—that you may have contributed to what happened. Maybe you didn’t prepare sufficiently for the interview. This is not to beat yourself up or wallow in shame. Quite the contrary; it’s about developing the self-awareness and confidence to keep learning, making whatever changes you need so as to do better next time.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well