Amy C.Edmondson

helping people and organizations learn so they can thrive in a world that keeps changing

Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.
—Winston Churchill

Error implies that there was a “right” way to do it in the first place. Intelligent failures are not errors. This book will elaborate on this and other vital distinctions that we must make if we wish to learn to put failure to good use

Maybe the good teams, I suddenly thought, don’t make more mistakes, maybe they report more

They swim upstream against the widely held view of error as indicative of incompetence, which leads people everywhere to suppress acknowledging (or to deny responsibility for) mistakes

better teams probably don’t make more mistakes, but they are more able to discuss mistakes

Good failures are those that bring us valuable new information that simply could not have been gained any other way

I define errors (synonymous with mistakes) as unintended deviations from prespecified standards, such as procedures, rules, or policies

Finally, violations occur when an individual intentionally deviates from the rules. If you deliberately pour flammable oil on a rag, light a match to it, and throw it into an open doorway, you are an arsonist and have violated the law. If you forget to properly store an oil-soaked rag and it spontaneously combusts, you have made a mistake.

The pain of failing, even in simple activities, is more emotionally salient than the pleasure of succeeding