3.23 Intelligent Failure

In this episode of The Mindful Academy, we explore insights from Dr. Amy Edmondson’s book, The Right Kind of Wrong, on embracing intelligent failure in volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environments. 

Learn how persistence, reflection, accountability, and apology can transform failure into growth and foster compassionate leadership. Perfect for leaders, learners, and anyone navigating today’s challenges—tune in to discover how to fail wisely and lead better. 

Episode Details

Transcript

Hello, and welcome back to the mindful Academy. Thank you again for letting me be in your ears this week. I have another episode today that is drawn from my conference attending. Again, this is from the International of the Institute of coaching conference sponsored by Harvard Med and McLean's Hospital, where kids listen to all sorts of people, including Dr. Amy Edmondson, from the Harvard Business School, who is North America's premier researcher on psychological safety. She has a book called The fearless organization that I've read that I think is pretty great. And her talk stemmed from her new book, which is called the right kind of wrong. And it's about taking intelligent risks, and sort of failing intelligently, which is different than the Silicon Valley narrative of fail fast, but acknowledges that that failure is something that we have to contend with as human beings. And also, that failure is something that we may be increasingly have to contend with, as our world becomes more complex. So her argument in this new book, is that novel contexts require solutions that we don't already have. So there are there are problems that exist in the world for which we already know the solutions, right? We have a polio vaccine, we have a COVID vaccine, there are problems that require solutions, that we already exist. And but then there are novel problems. For example, right now, AI is a novel problem for higher education. Right? We don't know how to solve it, because we've not seen it before. So if we're going to fail, well, what does it mean to do that? So she first she starts with introducing the notion of VUCA, which I've talked about before, maybe not on the podcast, but it's something that informs a lot of the leadership work that I do. V. You see, a VUCA is an acronym that I believe originally stems from the military. But it stands for volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. And so it explains the nature of emergent novel problems for which we do not already have circumstance, have solutions, and explains or describes the circumstances of our increasingly complex and fast moving world. And she says that in an environment described by VUCA, so in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment, we don't know in advance whose voice or whose idea might make a crucial difference. So and she's told a story about an airline, a plane that crashed because everybody did their checks on autopilot, and weren't really listening to the words and putting them in their present context, and the machine did not get de iced and it landed, anybody's voice could have set up, right, and the system would have flattened flag to that, and the plane would not have gone down. So if anybody's voice can make a difference, this is a challenge for leaders. So looking at generative AI and your campus, looking at enrollment, retention, curriculum redesign with whatever you're looking at, if you are trying to create something new that has never been created before, a policy or response, an idea, you don't know in advance, where the the solution where the nugget is going to come from. And so if you're a leader in that scenario, this puts a burden on you because you have to listen widely, you have to take into account viewpoints that maybe aren't your own, right? So it's a burden. But it also points to the fact that you can enlist your environment to help you experiment to help you fail wisely, and to help you learn. So if any voice can make the difference, and if you don't have to get it 100% right the first time, right? If you're failing intelligently and conducting experiments to gather more data, then you can take a little bit of the pressure off to be perfect. And if you'll recall in the last podcast where I talked about Dr. Alicia Moreland KAPOOYA he is recent which is trauma stewardship in our organizations. She said that success where you hit the target the one time you aim for it is not as good as mastery, where you aim 10 times and you hit the bullseye, seven of those, but you're in the range the other three, right? So in in a VUCA environment, if you think, okay, we're not gonna get it right 100% The first time. So what do we need to listen to to make the next intelligence step and gather some data? All right. So if we add this, the awareness that the burden is to listen broadly and experiment and not assume that just because you have in the past solve problems on the first try, that you will be able to solve brand new, innovative VUCA problems on the first try. It also illustrates that like top down decision making is likely, according to the intelligent failure model, it's likely to increase stupid failing, unwise failing, because you're not acknowledging that the Insight could come from someplace new. Alright, so that's one little nugget from Dr. Amy Edmondson is talk. She also presented sort of four keys to leadership and thriving as a fallible human being in a leadership role. And, and I think that this is thriving as a fallible human being period, right? Whether it's as a parent or a spouse, or a teacher, or a colleague, or a leader. So four steps to thriving as fallible step number one, persistence, failure is part of the game, it might be an important step, right? Seven out of 10 is mastery. So don't give up. Number two, reflection, what am I learning? Right? So as you're failing, what are you learning, so you're not just sending the same idea out there over and over and over again. But as you fail, you reflect and learn and adapt. Three is accountability. So if failure has happened, how do you claim responsibility for it? Where are your fingerprints on it? And how do you claim responsibility for it? So if you set yourself up to be 100%, right, the first time, this is really, really hard. As I'm recording this, police are breaking up student encampments that are protesting both the war in Gaza and their institutions investments in the Israeli machinery and industry of war. And in scenarios where failure is not an option, right, where the political or institutional discourse is, we have to do the right thing right now. Then when that right thing goes poorly, it is very hard to be accountable, right? creating an atmosphere like okay, let us try some things. And see what we learn and be accountable for when we go wrong, is perhaps a slower process, a messier process. But does it lead to more intelligent decision making? Dr. Edmondson this model would suggest Yes. So where are your fingerprints on this? And can you take accountability for it? And the fourth step is apology. Where do I need to apologize? Because if intelligent failure is something you're going to do, and people around you are going to do, we need to make it safe. So being accountable for for failure and apologizing for where harm is done, increases the safety of intelligent failure. So we persist, and we learn, we reflect on what we learn. We're accountable for where it went wrong. And we apologize if that caused harm. Again, does not seem too difficult to talk about, I think is incredibly difficult to live. As the news shows me every day right now that even if I assume positive intent on the part of leaders, it's really hard to fail publicly and to try to make amends. But I think if we set up our environments, to acknowledge that we are in novel circumstances that might require some intelligent failure and that we come at that with the spirit of learning, and accountability and grow Race and that compassion that I've talked about before? Do we permit ourselves to occasionally flub and recover? Right? So my takeaways from listening to Amy Edmondson as a coach, is we all make mistakes, right? Or maybe even worse, we don't act out of fear of not getting it right the first time. Right? So we are so hard on ourselves. We are so uncompassionate with ourselves as human beings who will fail. So if we really understand complexity, we really understand that our organizations, for example, and our communities are in or have been in, or will be in, again, a VUCA environment that is characterized by its volatility, its uncertainty, its complexity, and its ambiguity, where we don't know what the magic bullet that will fix it all. Then, how might we use that awareness to structure plans for intelligent failure, or, as one of my mentor coaches wrote about in her book, The experimental leader, conducting experiments where we know it's not going to be the complete answer the first time around, but we are gathering data. So I also connected Edmonds, Amy Edmondson talk and her recognition. Back to what Dr. Moreland KAPOOYA talked about in terms of right hitting aiming for seven out of 10 keep aiming at the bullseye and know that some of them are going to go wide. Right? We will be taking risks as leaders and as human beings. But can we do that intelligently? And can we do it compassionately and safely? So the book is the right kind of wrong, the science of failing? Well, I think I just summarized some of the main points of it. And you're too busy to read business books. So there is your summary from Amy to me to you. So maybe a tiny bit of a game of telephone. But we reflect that we persist, reflect we're accountable, we apologize. We recognize that volatile and uncertain solutions are going to require new answers for ambiguous realities. And we have compassion with ourselves as we occasionally flub. So go out and have compassion with your fallible self and the fallible selves around you. Thank you again for letting me be in your ears for a while and I look forward to coming back soon on the mindful Academy.