🔍 How often do we hear that failure is a stepping stone to success? While inspiring, this idea needs refinement. Not all failures are created equal.
In her brilliant book “Right Kind of Wrong” Amy Edmondson helps us see failure more clearly by categorizing it into three types:
1️⃣ Preventable failures: unproductive deviations from agreed processes—often driven by inattention, neglect, overconfidence, or faulty assumptions. Think of these as avoidable “human errors” that waste time, energy, and resources.
2️⃣ Complex failures: the result of small, basic errors accumulating, often triggered by unpredictable external factors. These failures can give warning signs, sometimes years in advance, but are harder to anticipate in real-time.
3️⃣ Intelligent failures: the most valuable kind—driven by curiosity, experimentation, and a desire to learn. These occur in uncertain, novel, and high-stakes environments. Learning from these failures can yield insights and foster breakthrough innovation.
💡 Key takeaway: the “right kind of wrong” failures are intelligent failures—those that deliver new information impossible to gain otherwise. While preventable and complex failures may occasionally lead to discoveries, our best strategy is to reduce them while focusing on embracing intelligent failures.
1️⃣ Preventable failures: unproductive deviations from agreed processes—often driven by inattention, neglect, overconfidence, or faulty assumptions. Think of these as avoidable “human errors” that waste time, energy, and resources.
2️⃣ Complex failures: the result of small, basic errors accumulating, often triggered by unpredictable external factors. These failures can give warning signs, sometimes years in advance, but are harder to anticipate in real-time.
3️⃣ Intelligent failures: the most valuable kind—driven by curiosity, experimentation, and a desire to learn. These occur in uncertain, novel, and high-stakes environments. Learning from these failures can yield insights and foster breakthrough innovation.
💡 Key takeaway: the “right kind of wrong” failures are intelligent failures—those that deliver new information impossible to gain otherwise. While preventable and complex failures may occasionally lead to discoveries, our best strategy is to reduce them while focusing on embracing intelligent failures.