Is there such a thing as a “good failure”? Innovative leadership researcher Amy Edmondson certainly thinks so. Her latest book, Right Kind of Wrong: Why Learning to Fail Can Teach Us to Thrive, lays out how failure can lead us to greater heights – insights, innovations and inventions.
But if you’ve even glanced in the direction of Silicon Valley in the last twenty years, that won’t be news to you. Now, in the tech sector and many others, we’re often told to embrace failure with the mantra “fail fast, fail often”.
What does that phrase really teach us, though? And is it a lesson we should be learning?
Over the course of 2024, I want to pull out a few key lessons from Edmondson’s book. We’ll start with a close look at what failure actually is, and how we should approach it.
How do we define failure?
Let’s start with the basics: what do we mean when we say “failure”? It’s a little more precise than just something going wrong.
Edmondson separates out three things which are often called failure, but which have meaningful differences:
Errors Also called mistakes. These are “unintended deviations from prespecified standards, such as procedures, rules, or policies.” Have you ever typed the wrong number into a spreadsheet? Used salt instead of sugar? Those are errors, not failures.
Violations These are intentional deviations from those prespecified standards. Though the word might feel loaded, sometimes violations are necessary – deliberately breaking rules which are unjust or unhelpful, perhaps. At other times, they’re annoying or even dangerous – think ignoring health and safety procedures.
Failures Rather than deviating from rules or standards, failures are deviations from “desired results”. You may have done everything right, to the best of your knowledge, but still not got what you hoped for. That could be winning an award, landing a contract, or simply baking a cake – it applies in all areas of life.
Is there such a thing as good or bad failure?
It’s natural to feel disappointed if you don’t achieve the results you wanted. And sometimes, there’s no hidden lesson to tease out. But sometimes, failure is a necessary step on the way to eventual success. So how do you know which kind it is? Edmondson defines three types of failure:
Basic These failures are the easiest to prevent. They’re caused by errors or slip-ups, and “can be avoided with care and access to relevant knowledge.” That cake made with salt rather than sugar? That’s a basic failure, caused by an identifiable and preventable error (using the wrong ingredient).
Complex These sorts of failures have multiple causes. They’re often difficult to untangle, as they “will always be with us due to the inherent uncertainty and interdependence we face in our day-to-day lives.” The best way to avoid them is by encouraging open communication, so small issues don’t compound as people scrabble to cover up their mistakes and basic failures.
Intelligent This is the type of failure you want to encourage. To be intelligent, a failure must meet four criteria. Does it take place in new territory (ie aiming for something new, or a better route to something known)? Does the context “present a credible opportunity” to advance toward your goal? Is it properly informed by the knowledge you already have? And is it as small as it can be (ie you’ve mitigated the risks of failure in advance)?
So is “fail fast, fail often” a good mantra?
As humans, we’re naturally averse to failure. And that instinctual fear is often bolstered as we grow up. So any phrase which helps you feel less scared of failure is good – if it works for you, use it!
It could also be useful for your team to hear this, if only as a reminder that you’re not one of those leaders who demands impossible perfection all the time. One very important point Edmondson makes is that, when we say failures are off limits, “failures don’t stop. They simply go underground.” This is exactly how basic failures compound and become complex ones – which are much harder to deal with.
But if you do decide to use this mantra (or something similar) to encourage innovation in your team, ask yourself three key questions first:
1.Does your team understand that you mean intelligent failures, not basic or complex? And do they know how to identify them? If not, you aren’t encouraging them to plan well and look for lessons from their failures. This can lead to wasted resources and a lot of frustration.
2.Have you created a culture of psychological safety? Edmondson and I are in total agreement on this. You really can’t have intelligent failure in a context where people are afraid to speak up, to disagree, to cope with rejection. “Psychological safety […] is the antidote to the interpersonal fear that prevents us from failing well.”
3.Are you helping people overcome their aversion to failure, or are you just expecting them to ‘get it’? Even if you’ve created a psychologically safe environment, it can take some time for that to sink in. And for people with certain mental health concerns or forms of neurodivergence, Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria can make it much harder to internalise. “Each of us is a fallible human being, living and working with other fallible human beings,” as Edmondson puts it. “Even if we work to overcome our emotional aversion to failure, failing effectively isn’t automatic.”
If you don’t feel the mantra helps with those three issues, maybe workshop a new one which fits your own team and your own context? “Fail intelligently”, “a failure now can mean success later”, “there’s no growth without failure”… The options are endless. The key point is simply to take the fear out of failure, and learn how to do it well.