Right Kind of Wrong by Amy Edmondson

I finished this book on June 5, 2025. I recommend this book 7/10.

Why you should read this book:

The author is, first of all, a great writer and very good at her research. The book is full of examples of the complex world we face and how our lizard brain reacts to these situations. This is a great book to read as a leader, to better understand what is happening behind the curtain when a project or mission fails, and also how to prevent the bad once and embrace to good ones.

Get your copy here.

🚀 The book in three sentences

1. Intelligent failures are good failures. And when failures happen, just think about how to pivot to move forward.

2. System thinking and processes help against failures.

3. Never try to solve a problem by yourself—Add more brainpower, and at least you drag someone else down with you.

   
   

📝 My notes and thoughts

• P48. As a leader, make sure to tell everyone, "We are in new territory—I need to hear from everyone."

• P63. To design a smart pilot in your organization, you should be able to answer yes to the following questions:

  • Is the pilot being tested under typical (or better yet, challenging) circumstances (rather than optimal ones)?

  • Is the goal of the pilot to learn as much as possible (not to prove the success of the innovation to senior executives)?

  • Is it clear that compensation and performance reviews are not based on a successful outcome for the pilot?

  • Were explicit changes made as a result of the pilot?

• P70. If you had a hypothesis and it was wrong, remind yourself not to be too disappointed, but rather to be curious. Why was it wrong? What did you miss? Train yourself to care more about the new information the failure brought than about being wrong. You can take solace in the fact that it was an intelligent failure! But intelligent failures's lessons don't announce themselves. Take the time to diagnose the miss carefully. Ask, What did I hope would happen? What happened instead? What might explain the difference? This work can be painstaking, but it always points toward a better way. It clarifies what to try next.

• P85. Intelligent failure is the right kind of wrong. It should be clear by now that "embracing failure" becomes not just intellectually but also emotionally feasible when we limit it to intelligent failure. Embracing intelligent failure is a requirement for inventors, scientists, celebrity chefs, and company innovation labs. But it can also help the rest of us live fuller, more adventuresome lives.

• P106. I find it helpful to think about it this way: Vulnerability is a fact. None of us can predict or control all future events; therefore, we are vulnerable. The only real question? Whether you acknowledge it! Many worry that doing so will make them appear weak, but research shows that being open about what you know and don't know builds trust and commitment. Admitting doubt in favor of uncertainty demonstrates strength rather than weakness. Another best practice is acknowledging your own contributions—no matter how large or small—to the failures that do occur. This is not only wise, it's practical, for two reasons. First, it makes it easier for others to do the same, making the analytic work of diagnosing failures easier, and second, other people will then see you as approachable and trustworthy and will be more enthusiastic about working with or befriending you.

• P174. The risk of coming up short in the eyes of an authority such as one's boss triggers a prepared fear in the brain related to being expelled from the tribe, a reality that might long ago have resulted in death from exposure or starvation. But today, when we're afraid to speak up about failure, our colleagues lose valuable opportunities to learn vicariously. Also, we miss out on opportunities to avoid preventable failures.

• P179. What happens if we rethink failure in this way? We can help ourselves learn from failure if we simply reframe a situation from "I was not promoted because I am a failure" to "I failed to get the promotion." Our relationship to failure improves when we unlearn the belief that "I am a terrible nurse because I made that mistake" to understand instead that "I made a mistake" and to ask, "What can I take away from it that will help me avoid making the same one in the future?"

• P183. Fortunately, reframing is possible. This means learning to pause long enough to challenge automatic associations. Realizing you will be late for an important meeting, you can challenge the spontaneous panic response—taking a deep breath and reminding yourself that it will be possible to make amends, and your survival is not at stake. In a far more dramatic example, Nazi concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl elucidated the power of reframing for readers of his timeless book, Man's Search for Meaning. Enduring concentration camps, including Auschwitz, in part of imagining himself in the future, sharing stories with those on the outside of the courage he saw in others, Frankl deliberately reframed the meaning of the horrors he was experiencing. Trained as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, he calls this as a moment of transformation—a shift from minute-to-minute suffering and fear to hope grounded in a plausible vision of the future. Frankl's remarkable story of resilience shows how seeing the same situation in a new way can be life enhancing.

• P191. Larry Wilson put it simply: Are you playing to win? Or playing not to lose? Playing to win meant a willingness to take risks in pursuit of challenging goals and satisfying relationships. Playing not to lose, which most of us do most of the time, meant avoiding where failure was possible. Playing to win, Larry maintained, was the stuff of great advances and great joy alike but necessarily brought setbacks along the way. Playing not to lose meant playing it safe, settling for activities, jobs, or relationships where you feel in control. The decision, Larry would be quick to explain, was essential cognitive. You could make up your mind to play to win and thus start on the path to changing your thinking.

• P194. Table of Cognitive Habits for Responding to Failures:

  • Stop: What is going on right now? What is the big picture? How was I feeling before this happened?

  • Challenge: What am I telling myself (or believing) that is causing how I am feeling? What objective data supports or negates my interpretation? What other interpretation of the situation is possible? Based on all the information I have, was my interpretation in my best long-term interest?

  • Choose: What do I truly want? What is going to best help me achieve my goals?

• P196. Choosing learning over knowing builds wisdom and equanimity. It opens a doorway glimpsed by too few toward becoming more caring, wise, respectful, willing to challenge (especially oneself), and, ultimately, more fulfilled. In the time I spent with Maxie and with Chris, I began to appreciate how much it painted them that we get in our own way. That we allow ego to drive out learning and connecting.

• P196. Today, the answer is this: choose learning over knowing. It doesn't matter whether you gravitate to Carol Dweck's growth mindsets, Maxie Maultsby's healthy-thinking habits, Chris Argyris's Model 2 theories in use, or Viktor Frankl's powerful memoir. The message is the same. Pause to challenge the automatic thoughts that cause you pain and embarrassment. Next, reframe those thought that cause you to choose learning over knowing. Too 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 the discomfort that comes with new experiences? Will I give myself permission to be human? Permission to learn?

• P199. Dolly Parton said, "We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails."

• P202. Most of us don't find ourselves standing in front of the literal maze, trying to find the right path. But the exercise provides an apt metaphor for our lives. All of us face uncertainty, which brings both risk and opportunities for discovery. All of us can benefit from paying to consider the context at critical and not-so-critical moments in our day-to-day lives. Too many failures in life and in companies occur because we don't pay attention to context. Further, too many failures are more emotionally painful than they need to be—when they're simply the beeping squares found in every life.

• P225. "It will happen. I am going to make mistakes, and I need the whole crew to participate. That's why I was saying that to them." Experts in almost any field take context into account habitually. The rest of us have to remind ourselves to do it. To practice situation awareness is to appreciate where you are right now so you can adopt the right mindset for the context and the stakes. Perhaps you can think of a time at work when you tormented yourself with anxiety about whether you would succeed in a role or a project. I know I can. It happened many times while I was writing this book! Situation awareness allows you to take stock of where you are and proceed appropriately, sometimes to reduce unhelpful anxiety and other times to lower risks. It's about developing the habit to pause and check—both for in-the-moment reactions and when planning some project or event—by asking yourself two essential questions: Where am I on the context spectrum? And what's at stake? While sizing up the uncertainty and the stakes, you might ask yourself, "Is this something I've done before? Are there experts or guidelines I can use to increase the chances of success?"

• P236. Practicing systems thinking starts with consciously expanding your lens from its natural preference for here and now to include elsewhere and later. Two simple questions can help:

  • Who and what else will be affected by this decision or action?

  • What additional consequences might this decision or action cause in the future?

• P237. Consider the fixes that have failed in your experience—whether at work or in some other aspect of your life. To fix a work overload, you push a meeting scheduled this week to next. When next week rolls around, your workload has not gotten any better, and the delayed meeting now concerns a bigger problem than before. What should you do instead? Here's a good start: make a serious assessment of system capacity (your capacity) for projects, prioritizing those that matter most and saying no to the others. Otherwise, you simply kick the can down the road.

• P239. On average, nurses were working an extra (unpaid) forty-five minutes simply to tie up loose ends before leaving the hospital. We discovered that nurses' responses to process failures fell into two categories. What we called "first-order problem-solving" was a workaround to complete the task without addressing causes of the problem. For example, a nurse working the night shift who ran out of clean linens to change her patient's beds simply walked to another unit that had linens and took from their supply. Problem solved. The workaround required minimal time and effort. She'd taken the initiative and been resourceful in caring for her patients. Never mind that the other unit was now in short supply. You can see in this example the simple failure to ask, Who else might be affected by this action? In contrast, for 7 percent of the process failures, nurses engaged in what we dubbed "second-order problem-solving." This could mean simply informing a supervisor or someone in charge of linens about the shortage. Second-order problem-solving got the immediate task done and did something to prevent the problem from recurring.

• P246. Section on A system for innovation.

• P249. Section on A system for quality.

• P251. What Wiseman noticed that day can be seen as a vital element of TPS: a deeply ingrained belief that problem-solving is a team sport. Failures are opportunities for improvement. Competent professionals are expected to successfully execute most of their tasks, so successes are not seen as worthy of colleagues' valuable time. Hence, the "puzzled" look on Mr. Cho's face. Puzzlement occurred because an expected behavior (share your problems so we can work on them together) didn't happen, while an unexpected one (bragging) did. What I love most about this story is that Wiseman's basting would not have raised an eyebrow in 99 percent of the work environments I've studied. We are socialized to share accomplishments and good news in front of the boss. Nothing puzzling about it! The most impressive result of TPS, in my view, is that the system normalizes failure—bad news, requests for help, and problems alike. It creates a community of scientists.

• P253. Section on A system of safety.

• P257. Appreciating the dynamics of systems is the last of the three competencies for practicing the science of failing well. After self-awareness and situation, awareness is system awareness. Mastering system awareness starts with training yourself to look for wholes rather than zooming in, as we naturally do on the parts. It's about expanding your focus, even if briefly, to redraw the boundaries and see a larger whole and the relationships that shape it. Much of our education and work experience has taught us to diagnose and become experts in parts, shortchanging the value of looking at the relationships that tie them together. We can learn to see and appreciate systems and use this knowledge to reduce preventable failures. Don't forget that appreciating systems helps us see that we are not wholly responsible for all the failures in our vicinity. This is not to let us off the hook for our contributions to failures, but rather to help us see that we are parts of a larger systems, with complex relationships, some of which are beyond our ability to predict or control. This insight has played a vital role in the modern patient safety movement. Notably in helping people speak up quickly about things that go wrong or when they're unsure about something. System thinking empowers us to design systems better able to achieve their stated goals, such as quality, safety, and innovation.

• P273. In any new context, it's crucial to pause to consider where to experiment next. What is it that most needs to be learned to get us where we want to go? We can think of the pivot as a way to tell a different story. Instead of "We made a plan, and then we failed, and here's the moral of the story," it's a narrative about change. "We made a plan; things didn't go as planned, so we pivoted." Jake's reframe here is more than about language. It focuses on where the story goes next. It brings suspense rather than shame. Unsurprisingly, Jake found that people pushed back at first, saying, "Isn't this just a matter of semantics?" To which he agrees. "But words change meaning," he points out. "And 'just semantics' understates the importance of using the right words. All of a sudden, just by changing the language, we got more failure talk!" Here's where situation awareness meets self-awareness. We need the right language to help us meet failure successfully.