Intelligent
failures
occur when
branching
into new
territory—
products,
markets,
etc.—and
can provide
valuable
insights for
the future.
properly, such failures can provide the in-
sight necessary for ultimate success. Of
course, that doesn’t mean taking on proj-
ects blindly with no thought to the conse-
quences of failure. It means having a plan
with the full awareness and acceptance
that failure could be the outcome.
Unfortunately, Edmondson believes
that the stigma around failure prevents
organizations from reaping the benefits.
When executives are asked which mistakes
in their organization were truly blame-
worthy, most say between 2% and 5%. But
when asked what share of mistakes were
treated as blameworthy, the answers usu-
ally ranged between 70% and 90%. “The
unfortunate consequence,” Edmondson
wrote, “is that many failures go unreported
and their lessons are lost.”failure is sTill painful. And it doesn’t
make success inevitable. The benefit of
hindsight makes a story like Row ling’s look
like another step on the road to destiny.
But in the moment, there was no indication
that Rowling’s path of failure was leading
anywhere. “I had no idea then how far the
tunnel extended,” she said. “And for a long
time, any light at the end of it was a hope
rather than a reality.”
But Rowling also felt liberated. Having
tasted failure in its full measure, she no
longer feared it. “Failure meant a stripping
away of the inessential,” she said. “I was
still alive, and I still had a daughter whom
I adored, and I had an old typewriter and
a big idea.” Rowling threw herself into her
writing, stealing snatches of time to write
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
at various Edinburgh cafés after walking
her daughter to sleep in her stroller. Iron-
ically, Rowling’s breakthrough proved to
be an epic missed opportunity for others.
Her pitch famously had been rejected 12
times before publisher Scholastic Corp.
said yes—and struck gold.
“It is impossible to live without failing
at something,” Rowling concluded. “Un-
less you live so cautiously that you might
as well not have lived at all. In which case,
you fail by default.” •your thoughts are all about how to distance
yourself from the failure, you’re not going
to learn from your mistakes.”recognizing ThaT failure exists is
one thing. Knowing what to do with it is
equally important. Amy C. Edmondson, a
professor of leadership and management
at Harvard Business School, has identi-
fied three general categories of failure:
preventable failures, complexity-related
failures and intelligent failures. Prevent-
able failures can occur when people and
organizations don’t do what they know
they need to do in order to be successful.
They might not follow proven methods or
procedures, may be inattentive to detail or
simply lack the necessary skills or training
to accomplish the task at hand. “Most fail-
ures in this category can indeed be consid-
ered ‘bad,’ ” Edmondson wrote in the Har-
vard Business Review in 2011. “But in such
cases, the causes can be readily identified
and solutions developed.”
On the other hand, complexity-related
failures are often unavoidable and are bred
by the “inherent uncertainty of work.” Un-
predictable needs, people and challenges
can combine to confront people and or-
ganizations with problems they’ve never
faced and can’t be easily planned for in ad-
vance. Enduring complexity-related fail-
ures is inevitable, Edmondson writes, but
they should be studied thoroughly after
the fact. Their damage can also be miti-
gated with contingency plans that focus
on safety and risk management. And not
all complexity- related failures are unavoid-
able. “Avoiding consequential failures
means rapidly identifying and correcting
small failures,” she wrote. “Most accidents
in hospitals result from a series of small
failures that went unnoticed and unfortu-
nately lined up in just the wrong way.”
Intelligent failures are the most valu-
able kind of failure. They occur when
branching out into completely uncharted
territory: developing a new product, per-
haps, or entering a new market, which re-
quire risk-taking and experimentation.
Setbacks are inevitable. But if harnessed