Product Thinking

Episode 173: Building a Healthy Failure Culture for Innovation and Learning with Amy Edmondson, Professor at Harvard

May 29, 2024

Amy Edmondson, Professor at Harvard Business School, talks about the science of failing well and creating a healthy failure culture for innovation. She discusses the importance of psychological safety, distinguishing intelligent and unintelligent failure, and fostering a culture that values learning and experimentation within organizations.

44:07

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Episode guests

Amy Edmondson

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Quick takeaways

Creating a culture of psychological safety encourages learning from failures and promotes innovation within organizations.

Transitioning from a focus on efficiency to embracing experimentation can revitalize innovation and adaptability in scaling organizations.

Deep dives

The Importance of Psychological Safety and Learning from Failures

Amy Edmondson, an expert on organizational psychology, discusses the significance of psychological safety in fostering collaboration and innovation within organizations. Her research emphasizes the power of learning from failures and understanding the characteristics of intelligent failures. She highlights the importance of creating a culture where it is safe to speak up about mistakes, enabling teams to share learnings and insights for continuous improvement and innovation.

Introduction

5min

Exploring the Role of Psychological Safety in Organizational Learning and Innovation

2min

Fostering a Culture of Healthy Failure in Innovation

17min

Balancing Risk and Innovation in Competitive Markets

2min

Navigating Innovation and Leadership Challenges in Organizations

13min

Assessing Safe Environments and Future Work Design

4min

In this episode of the Product Thinking podcast, host Melissa Perri is joined by Amy Edmonson, professor at Harvard Business school and author of the new book: “Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well.” Join them as they discuss the science of failing well, what is psychological safety and the distinction between leadership and leaders.

Amy has been at Harvard Business School for nearly twenty eight years now as their Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management. She is a prolific author; her most recent book, the Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well, is the Winner of the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year 2023 and is the Behavioral Scientist Notable Book of 2023. Amy has appeared on multiple other podcasts, such as “The Psychology Podcast” and “Better,” to discuss Failing Well. Amy was also a guest recently on The Psychology Podcast, discussing Failing Well. She has also recently written for the Guardian: “The big idea: why we need to learn to fail better”.

You’ll hear them talk about:

02:42 - Amy is an expert in failure. In product management, failure is a hot topic. It’s important for it to be okay to fail for an experiential and innovative environment to thrive. Innovation comes with failure. Amy distinguishes between intelligent and unintelligent failure by identifying four key characteristics needed. First is a pursuit of a goal, second is there isn’t an existing formula or process, third is you’ve done your background research and fourth is that the experiment should be no larger than it needs to be.
09:01 - To create a healthy failure culture you need to create an environment of psychological safety for everyone. It’s important for people to feel safe to fail to encourage them to share their ideas and not hold back when contributing to innovation. Amy suggests that leaders can promote psychological safety using a combination of behaviors and tools. For instance, leaders should always be willing to go first and acknowledge their own mistakes,therefore leading by example. Psychological safety in a work culture is incredibly important. Without it, people stop telling the truth.
27:28 - There is a distinction between leadership and leaders. A CEO is in a leadership role and there are many people that are influenced by them. This doesn’t mean only a CEO is a leader or display leadership qualities. In fact, individual contributors that display leadership behaviors are important to every team. They might not be in a leadership role, but Amy believes that leadership can start with anybody; it is a behavior and attitude, which is infectious when embodied.

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Previous guests include: Shruti Patel of US Bank, Steve Wilson of Contrast Security, Bethany Lyons of KAWA Analytics, Tanya Johnson Chief Product Officer at Auror, Tom Eisenmann of Harvard Business School, Stephanie Leue of Doodle, Jason Fried of 37signals, Hubert Palan of Productboard, Blake Samic of Stripe and Uber, Quincy Hunte of Amazon Web Services

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Product Thinking

Episode 173: Building a Healthy Failure Culture for Innovation and Learning with Amy Edmondson, Professor at Harvard

Episode guests

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

Deep dives

The Importance of Psychological Safety and Learning from Failures

Recognizing the Shift in Organizational Culture at Scale

Assessing Organizational Culture During Interviews

Future Exploration of Work Design and Employee Experience

Get the Snipd
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AI-powered
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Product Thinking

Episode 173: Building a Healthy Failure Culture for Innovation and Learning with Amy Edmondson, Professor at Harvard

Episode guests

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

Deep dives

The Importance of Psychological Safety and Learning from Failures

Recognizing the Shift in Organizational Culture at Scale

Assessing Organizational Culture During Interviews

Future Exploration of Work Design and Employee Experience

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