Right Kind of Wrong

A world-leading Harvard professor reveals how the secrets of 'intelligent failure' can make any team more resilient, successful, and happy.

Winner of the Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award

'Absolutely outstanding' Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist | 'A masterclass' Angela Duckworth, author of Grit | 'Excellent' Andrew Hill, Financial Times

We used to think of failure as a problem, to be avoided at all costs. Now, we're often told that failure is desirable—that we must 'fail fast, fail often'. The trouble is, neither approach distinguishes the good failures from the bad. As a result, we miss the opportunity to fail well.

Here, Amy Edmondson—the world's most influential organisational psychologist—reveals how we get failure wrong, and how to get it right. Drawing on four decades of research into the world's most effective teams, she unveils the three archetypes of failure—basic, complex, and intelligent—and explains how to harness the revolutionary potential of the good ones (and eliminate the bad). Along the way, she poses a simple, provocative question: What if it is only by learning to fail that we can hope to truly succeed?

'Lays out a clearer path about how to stop avoiding failure and take smarter risks.' Books of the Year, Financial Times