The right kind of wrong: Why failure is a powerful tool for progress and innovation

She says: “We can learn from all failures, but there are some for which the only way to learn that lesson is through that failure. In other words, the only way to acquire the new knowledge is to experiment and see what happens.” Unfortunately, though, many people are afraid to fail.

“Most are unaware of the degree to which our default mindset today is a vestige of the industrial era,” Edmondson says. Once a process and a market were created, it was possible to succeed for a long stretch without much experimentation or change. Reliable production was vital to success in mass production in factories; this (rather than experimentation and innovation) determined a company’s growth and competitiveness. But this mindset left a legacy that made employees uncomfortable to share ideas, take risks, or voice concerns.

Edmondson urges business leaders to “drive fear out of the organization”, as the management thinker Edwards Deming once said. “Fear is the enemy of learning. Fear is the enemy of excellence in any endeavor where there’s uncertainty,” she says.

Psychological safety and effective collaboration

To embrace our human fallibility and learn exactly when to fail well, fostering psychological safety – a subject that Edmondson has studied voraciously – is paramount. That means creating a workplace culture where individuals feel confident voicing their opinions and contributions, free from ridicule or punishment. “If you want to be a learning organization, which you must if you want to succeed over the long term in a changing world, then you must have an environment where people feel safe to speak up about what is going on,” she says.

Collaboration is equally vital. Edmondson’s research into teaming highlights the importance of these dynamics. “More than ever before, the nature of work today precludes stable teams – a small group of people who really get to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses well over a period of time, and can almost effortlessly coordinate. That’s the gold standard where teamwork is most natural,” she says. But many jobs today are not conducive to single, stable teams. Instead, we have to get comfortable teaming with different people at different times.

The way to do teaming well is for leaders to continually emphasize the importance of the overarching goal,” she adds. “It’s difficult, so you want people to be motivated. You want to re-energize and re-inspire them often with discussions of those who depend on us, how important it is, how meaningful it is.”

That is going to be crucial in an era marked by macroeconomic slowdowns, social upheaval, burnout, and climate change concerns. With organizations facing numerous pressures, failure is going to be inevitable. However, we can take steps to minimize bad failures and maximize valuable ones.

Edmondson concludes: “With best practices and vigilance, you can avoid most wasteful failures, and you can learn to appreciate the wisdom of increasing the rate of intelligent failures, because that’s where innovation comes from.” The message is clear: in a world in turmoil, failure can be a powerful ally on the path to success and innovation.

Amy Edmondson will be discussing ‘Making the most of failure’ on a panel at this year’s Global Peter Drucker Forum on 30 Nov in Vienna. This year’s theme is ‘Creative Resilience: Leading in an Age of Discontinuity.’