115 Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well with Dr. Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School
If you're human, then you've felt the disappointment of failure. Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, helps us reframe the concept of failure, both in our personal and professional lives by sharing her research backed insights.
Whoever you are in the world, this episode will help you discover intelligent failure so that you can limit preventable failures, stress and thrive.
Amy Edmondson's Website: https://amycedmondson.com/
“Amy Edmondson, one of our finest business minds, offers a bold new perspective on human fallibility. With a graceful mix of scientific research and practical advice, she shows how to transform failure from an obstacle to a stepping stone — from a weight that holds us back to a wind that propels us forward.
RIGHT KIND OF WRONG is a guidebook for our times.”
—Daniel H. Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author of THE POWER OF REGRET and DRIVE
Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School, renowned for her research on psychological safety over twenty years. Her award-winning work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Psychology Today, Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, and more. Named by Thinkers50 in 2021 as the #1 Management Thinker in the world, Edmondson’s TED Talk “How to Turn a Group of Strangers into a Team” has been viewed over three million times. She received her PhD, AM, and AB from Harvard University. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is the author of Right Kind of Wrong, The Fearless Organization, and Teaming.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/amycedmondson/
The following transcript is automated:
Dr. Juna: [00:00:00] Hello there.
Dr. Edmonson : Hello
Dr. Juna: Thank you so much for being here. I'm so
excited to talk to
Dr. Edmonson : thank you.
for having me.
Dr. Juna: gosh, what an honor. Look at what I have here.
Dr. Edmonson : Ah, wow. That was fast.
Dr. Juna: There's a lot of, writing in here, but
Dr. Edmonson : Yeah. Oh good.
Dr. Juna: Amazing book you're often listed as the top 50 thought leader, I think you're also
A leader in communication because honestly, we can have brilliant thoughts all the time and never communicate to anybody.
Right? But
you
Dr. Edmonson : thank you.
Dr. Juna: have such clarity, and I just loved listening to a lot of the podcasts you've done lately and your TED Talks. So I'm really excited to be here with you.
Dr. Edmonson : Well, they, you are so kind and it's so, it's something I've been working on. I've been working on clarity for a very long time. So I'm always trying to find a way to, how do we explain that, right? How do we explain that clearly or in a way that works. So thank you very much. Nothing could matter more.
Dr. Juna: I was wondering if the books came first, or speaking clearly came first or kind of together.
I,
mean, obviously writing a book will really help you, right? In
Dr. Edmonson : Yes, exactly. I think one of the ways I try to get clarity is through writing, and sometimes that's articles, sometimes that's a book. there's something about having to put it down in words that makes you realize, Ooh, I don't yet understand this well enough. Right.
Dr. Juna: It always feels like that, right?
and this is such a comprehensive book, I love this book and my only worry is that we're not gonna get to everything I wanna talk to you about. I wanted to start with Your three archetypes that you describe in the book about failure. if you could just explain that to the audience, that would be great.
Dr. Edmonson : Yeah, There are three types of failure and Only one of them is good actually. So let me start with the good one.
I call these intelligent failures, and they are the undesired results of thoughtful forays into new territory. I can break that down. I mean, more
definition. An intelligent failure is a failure that happens[00:02:00] new territory. In pursuit of a goal driven by a hypothesis or at least good reason to believe it might work. And finally, and importantly, it's as small as possible you don't make bigger betts than you can afford. the, the reason I call it intelligent is it's literally the only way. To get the information or to get the knowledge you, you wanna get in pursuit of some goal. those are intelligent failures. It's really, you could think of those as the kinds of things that that scientists do for a living now.
Dr. Juna: You also said that it doesn't cause a lot of harm. Or it doesn't cause harm,
Dr. Edmonson : right?
And that's why the, the small, you know, the smallness means, doesn't cause harm. Economic, you know, safety reputational, right? in a way you could think of it as a managed risk, right? it's,
Dr. Juna: Hmm. I love that.
Dr. Edmonson : is we don't even wanna do those, right? As human beings. We sort of wanna be good at everything already, or we wanna be perfect, or we wanna get it right the first time. That's unrealistic when we're going after lofty ambitions or, you know, or, or, or new activities or making new friends. we would love to not experience failure.
Dr. Juna: it's painful,
Dr. Edmonson : it's painful. It's always painful, even when it's the smart kind. But if, if you make that your goal, really the only way to achieve it is just to not take risks, you know, which means no adventure, no new hobbies, no new sports, um, new friends, right?
You just have to sort of play it safe
Dr. Juna: And you talk about even relationships, like
Dr. Edmonson : anyone who's an adult, who has, spent some of their life, dating, uh, people in search of a partner has, not everyone, I guess a few people are lucky enough to meet their soulmate, early in life and just on it goes from there. but most of us have had a lot of failures along the way too. a successful, meaningful relationship that endures?
So the other two types, I call them basic and complex. Now a basic failure is a single cause failure. It's some, you make a mistake.[00:04:00] You have a failure. you look, God forbid down at your cell phone and you, you know, crash into something in, in your drive, right?
That's, that's a failure. It's a basic failure. It's utterly preventable not something to celebrate. It is something to learn from, right? I think all failures, you know, the good and the bad, they're all Um, sources of learning complex failures are multi causal. They're the perfect storm. They're the kinds of failures that happen when, not one, but several things happened, maybe out of the ordinary at the same time, and led to a breakdown. Um, any one of the factors on their own would not have caused a failure, but the way they came together led to a bad outcome. many. Healthcare related, uh, failures fall into this category, right?
Where, you know, people are mostly doing everything right, but couple of things either go wrong or are different in a, in an unusual way, it just comes together to create that mishap.
Dr. Juna: You've done a lot of research with the medical field, right? And I'm a radiologist.
I don't know if you were aware of that, but now I teach
Dr. Edmonson : Yes. You know?
Dr. Juna: medicine,
so I teach the science of resilience now, but I used to, I. Well, I, I am still a radiologist. Somebody just recently said to me, once, a radiologist, always a radiologist.
There is a lot of, you know, misses in radiology, which I wanna get back to. But I also wanna talk about the complex failures. And I just wanna ask you, is there ever really a basic failure? 'cause I really related to that story you told about when you were in that, I think of Regatta, where you were racing with people and then you got hit with the boom.
And you had to go to the hospital. I think you got stitches. But that type of thing, even though you looked up for a second, you didn't see the downwind turning. That is a complex failure because there were things happening that were also out of your control. Maybe. So, I don't know.
Dr. Edmonson : Yes, I.
Dr. Juna: or, [00:06:00] you know, circumstances. Yeah.
Dr. Edmonson : And it's funny 'cause toward at the very end of the book, I save, and, and periodically, you know, keep in mind a lot of these things aren't black and white. Or completely dichotomous. They
are judgment calls. And I judged that failure to be a basic failure because I made a. I made a mistake that an expert like me in, in, I'm an expert sailor, should not make right.
I was overly casual., I was glad the race part was over. I'm just sailing into the dock now. I'm sailing dead down wind. Any expert sailor knows. That if you're sailing dead down wind, especially in a lake or a river where the wind is always shifty, you are vigilant, you're on top of it, right? Because that boom can flip over at the tiniest shift of the wind. It's not even a question of if that'll happen, it's almost a question of when it will happen. And so you pay attention, right? It's a mistake if you're working with dangerous equipment. Let's say you're in a machine, uh, shop, working with a dangerous drill, you wear your safety goggles. You know, if you don't and something goes wrong, it's a basic failure. absolutely preventable.
Dr. Juna: which scares me because basic failure of what you mentioned before, looking down at your phone when you're driving. Everybody does that.
I mean, almost everybody, which is so scary because that is a basic failure that happens all the time. But then I have to question the system. In which it happens,
why?
You know why
Dr. Edmonson : I mean, why?
did You feel the need to look down? I mean, were , you're late for a meeting or feeling stressed or you had a , argument with your teenager or something. Right? I mean, I, I guess the reason, because you could say, I really understand, Amy, why you're distinguishing between the intelligent failures and all the others, but why make the distinction between the basic and the complex, , given the potential subjectivity? and for me it's because the, , basic failures are the kind that we [00:08:00] can minimize to near zero when we, Are willing to follow best practices, right? When we're just, we use the checklist with intent. we sort of say, okay, you know, I may think I'm pretty good at this, but I'm I'm gonna bring my full bell self to it. cause I know how to do this, I'm gonna try to do it really well, not do it in my sleep. Right? So
Dr. Juna: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Edmonson : Category of things that for all of us in our lives, go wrong, that, are highly preventable Now, size matters, right? Because it's okay if you sort of, casually, you know, as I say, the milk in the cupboard, right?
I mean, the It's a failure, but the size of that failure is so small as to not worry about it too much. The problem with basic failures is that some of them can be, you know, just that single error. And it can lead to, you know, nine stitches in the emergency department or, you know, as it happened in the, I write about one at at Citibank where someone made a single error and accidentally transferred $900 billion.
Right. Which is like crazy, you know, $900 million. Sorry. You know, it's a crazy,
um,
Dr. Juna: Millions, billions,
Dr. Edmonson : Right. I know, it's
it's so much money. Right.
Dr. Juna: Lots of money.
Dr. Edmonson : so they accidentally, uh, transfer almost a billion dollars. Right. But,
but, um, so the categorization isn't about size. it's about type. And
then the other things, I think the complex failures are, both. On the rise and quite pernicious, right? Because this, we live in such complex times and so many things can sort of come together in just the wrong way at the same time, um, that we're vulnerable to them. But what I like to point out about the complex failures is that given that not in any one of the factors, wouldn't cause the failure on its own. I mean, you need several of them. That means. The complex failures give us multiple opportunities to catch and correct right there. All you have to do is kind of remove one, maybe two of the factors
and [00:10:00] the failures avoided,
Dr. Juna: that straw that
broke the
Dr. Edmonson : right, right, right, Just find that one straw. Find one straw to take out.
Right. And.
Dr. Juna: I love your, breakdown and the archetypes and the types of failures because for me, I. The human body, which , I am trying in my latter part of my career to prevent and to keep people well in the first
place. Because when we go to medical school, we're learning about all the chronic diseases, all the complex failures that the body has, but we never really.
Learn about how to prevent it
in the first place, right? , we learn about everything that can go wrong and then we put, band-aids on it. We ize it, we give pharmaceuticals, uh, but we don't actually learn the prevention part. And that to me is so fascinating as a mom. I know you're a mom, right?
Dr. Edmonson : Two
Dr. Juna:
So when we're mothers, we want to prevent harm to our children. preventing all of these diseases, like you said, there's so many little components that come to, and I think.
How I am interpreting your, simple versus complex is that the simple is things like everyday simple behaviors like, brushing your teeth or, just basic hygiene, eating, fruit, know, getting sleep. So all these in itself are isolated and small mistakes, but then they literally add up to 80 to 90% of chronic illnesses,
um, including cancer, heart disease, all the big
So, to me there's the simple systematic failure, day to day choices that we make. And then it can turn into a complex failure perhaps,
but maybe I'm interpreting it
in my own way.
Dr. Edmonson : absolutely. and what I like about what you're saying is it's my goal too. It's I'm not a failure fan, right. I'm a success fan. I mean, I
Dr. Juna: Well, failure. Yeah. In your, you said failure is great and I
agree with you.
Dr. Edmonson : I mean, failure's part of life, right? It,
it's not our favorite part of life. But if we don't. Embrace it as a necessary part of a full adventurous life. then we do ourselves [00:12:00] a disservice. Right? So it's the, in a way it's, the book is really about, Health and wholeness. Not in a literal sense, but it's, it's about what do we need to do both to happily embrace the things that go wrong in new territory. 'cause if you're lucky, you'll experience lots of those and then also mindfully. Prevent as much as we can of the old stuff that doesn't need to happen again. I mean, we should hope for lives without car accidents, right? We should, we should hope for lives, you know, without unnecessary trips to the emergency department.
Dr. Juna: I wholeheartedly agree with all of this. Absolutely. going back to the medical field, This sort of flippant phrase, Failure's not an option. and you've met a lot of doctors by now, so we feel like sometimes failure's not an option because of somebody's life, you know?
And when I was training back in the nineties, we used to have m and ms and they still have
Dr. Edmonson : They
still have that
Dr. Juna: morbidity
mortality, and you would never want to be the presenter there
because not only . did that mean something went wrong?
You were in front of your colleagues, your superiors, sometimes a hundred people in an auditorium, and they weren't compassionate or kind because this was somebody's life on the line.
And You're on the stand
and you're being,
you know, cross examined. Yes.
and that has evolved now I hear that the M and MSM have gotten, uh, more and more not so formal and big, and they haven't really, they're not, Recording it.
They're not even maybe sometimes documenting things because there's so much concern about discoverability with lawyers
and, how would you advise physicians or medical systems
to deal with that
Dr. Edmonson : Well, to begin with, I do agree with you. I think they have gotten better. My husband's also a physician, Hemon, he too trained in the nineties, but is, now a dean of. Our own medical school here at Harvard. I think the recognition has been that learning is essential and [00:14:00] fear tends to drive out learning.
Right. And nobody, it's like there's nobody in those auditoriums who is in favor of harming patients. Right. occasionally you get some criminal in there. we, you know,
Recently, right? But the, point is, all humans are fallible. and all systems are prone to breakdown. So if we take those as a given, we know that like it or not, some things will go wrong. Now, most of them, and this is our goal, right? Most of them can be caught and corrected before harm occurs. But if we act as if. Things are not supposed to go wrong and people are not supposed to be fallible, then we will lose the battle of catching and correcting, right? It just will simply not be culturally and psychologically possible to do the work we need to do to catch and correct human error system breakdown at so that we can actually achieve zero harm. In the meantime, like while we're on that lifelong journey, we are going to do our very best to learn from every Miss that we make, right? So when there is a need for a morbidity and mortality conference, we Engage in it with full respect for the gravity of the situation, but absolute intent to learn every morsel from it possible. And that's the goal, right? So that can be not nice, but kind. Right? That can be kind and respectful to the patient. That can be kind and respectful. um, there's an argument to be made that the people that the clinicians who were involved in especially, you know, an unnecessary death, are also in a state of great pain., and that it's not to create an equivalence, but if that human reality isn't respected, you will not do these important rituals well enough to get the knowledge that they bring.
Dr. Juna: [00:16:00] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the physicians are devastated as well.
Like it's not equal to the suffering
of um, the person who's been affected. But, know, there is a high rate of physician suicide.
That and
Dr. Edmonson : Nobody wants,
Dr. Juna: month, you know, we can. Also emphasize
that this whole failure, being able to speak about failure without the shame or the stigma can really, help with this type of situation where there's lawyers, doctors, dentists, high rates of suicide.
Dr. Edmonson : it's not about minimizing the importance of this, but it is about doing it with the. The care and the rigor that it deserves.
Dr. Juna: Absolutely. you are an expert in psychological safety , I know that you wanna redefine this term now '
Dr. Edmonson : I used to find it the same way from the very beginning, but it's taken on a life of its own.
So my definition is psychological safety describes an environment in which people believe they can take. Interpersonal risks, like speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, and even mistakes. And a short way of saying that is a sense of permission for candor. So it is not about being nice, it's not about being comfortable, right? it's about willing to learn really together
and recognizing that's not comfortable and it's not easy. but it it is great in terms of if you really wanna, do new things, if you really wanna be a part of a great team, you know, if you wanna innovate, you have to have that willingness to take those kinds of interpersonal risks.
Dr. Juna: And so when we have this feeling, whether it's organizational or within your own family or in your classroom, that people can speak up, then you can, I know you speak about this as well, tone down your amygdala. Reactions
and be able to really problem solve and come into your frontal lobe to be able to see something from a different angle or to be creative, right?
Because you're not gonna be creative when your fight or flight[00:18:00]
system is
Dr. Edmonson : And that's, you know, to go back to the, your failure is not an option. Rhetoric, the problem there is it creates fear. It creates hiding. It creates an unwillingness to speak up because the message was clear, right? The message was crystal clear. Failure's not an option. Unfortunately that doesn't make failure go away. It just makes people unwilling to talk about it, which of course puts you at even greater risk of causing actual harm. , but we have to have empathy, or at least I have empathy for clinicians who say, yeah, yeah, but you don't understand. I mean, I'm really, I have life and death here and say yes. Right?
And. Context matters. So if you are operating in a situation, you're acting in a situation where there's high stakes like life and death and any kind of uncertainty, then more than ever you wanna invite the quiet voices in, right? More than ever. You wanna, do whatever you can to make sure that you get it right.
Dr. Juna: if you had to give advice
to a leader or of an organization or even, a mom who's running a family
how would you balance that psychological safety with, a high
standards? High
Dr. Edmonson : a great question,
and I don't think of it as a balance. I think of it as a both. And a great family has permission for candor. We want the truth, right? We wanna hear from you. It doesn't mean. That bad behavior will be just tolerated, right? it means that, we have a clear line of sight on what we need to work on or, you know, if you have teenagers, you want them to absolutely not hesitate for a second to, to. Pick up their phone and call you when they need a ride home because they're, don't feel what's going on is safe and they won't be yelled at because, well, why'd you get yourself into that situation in the first place, right? That you'll just be no questions asked. You get a ride home.
That's psychological safety. you know, commitment to high standards is something else, and I think you, you both articulate it, but you also help inspire and motivate. Whether it's your team or your, children, you know, to do the very best they can with what they've got. Right? And to be [00:20:00] willing to take the interpersonal risks of honesty, which also includes asking for help when you're in over your head, if you do both, you have the chance at creating a kind of learning zone where people are, Or stretching, know, trying hard doing things they haven't, haven't maybe done before. Um, they're honest about what's really happening. That's where ongoing achievement and excellence comes from. It doesn't come, you cannot say, well, I'm just gonna have high standards around here, therefore, you know, failures, I don't wanna hear about it or problems.
I don't wanna hear about them. You know, so I think for, for parents and for educators, it's in a start by recognize human fallibility and system fallibility as a given, right? That's the kind of the world. That's the real world. That's the world we live in. Um, practice what I'll call sort of critical. Failure skills, like persisting in hard things. You if you try something new or you take calculus and you know it's gonna be hard, you're gonna pers, you're willing to persist through setbacks, through failures, self-reflection, and collective reflection. Whether through those kinds of, you know, after action reviews or just your own, you might keep a journal.
You might be honest with yourself about what you're doing, what you're learning. And taking accountability. You know, when something goes wrong, take a look at, hmm, how did I contribute to that and how did other factors contribute to that? And be, be willing to look at both, not just how, uh, well, I was kind of a victim here because, because, because, and, and also know, master the sincere apology. 'cause it will come in handy and it is important
Dr. Juna: So when you say sincere apology, what are the components of a real apology that works?
Dr. Edmonson : It's first, it's acknowledging something went wrong, that harm, that occurred, small harm or bigger harm, and. Acknowledging your own role in it, right? not making excuses, but [00:22:00] saying, I came up short, right. in some way in whatever that was. or I was careless or I was, not thinking
It's, it's, you're really taking responsibility. Resist the temptation which is ever present to, make an excuse. Right. It wasn't my fault because, just do it and then, in many cases offer to make amends like, you know, I will not be late again. Or what can I do to, to help make it up?
Right. So it's a just a kind of open, honest willingness to, to own your part in it.
Dr. Juna: It takes
practice,
Dr. Edmonson : It does take practice and, you know, the beauty of a good apology is it not only helps the. Person that you may have, harmed, but it actually helps you. You know, it turns out there's research on this. it makes you feel better, more whole, more positive emotions as a result, because really what you're doing is, is repairing the relationship just a little
It had a little tiny harm to it, and now we can kind of make it whole again.
Dr. Juna: And isn't that also where confidence grows, where you can actually be aware of yourself, aware of your shortcomings, aware of your faults, and then be able to admit it? I think the
most confident magnetic people are the ones who can sit there and say, oh yeah, I know that about myself, and.
Dr. Edmonson : Absolutely. It's so, um, it's so attractive, you know, and many people make a mistake in thinking, oh, people will like me better if I have this sort of perfect exterior. You know, I'm always getting things right, not getting things wrong. Truth is no. We actually like people who are. Honest and whole and you know about their shortcomings.
Dr. Juna: Compassionate. of course.
Dr. Edmonson : Vulnerable.
Dr. Juna: there was something that you said on your podcast with Greg.
Dr. Edmonson : Oh
yeah.
Dr. Juna: that I found really interesting that you said the idea of a mental model. That we have a mental model of what is happening in our reality, and that if we could remind ourselves that all of what we perceive of the world around us [00:24:00] is a mental model, then it could literally launch us into, I think you said, freedom.
Maybe free us, launch us, and it's awesome.
I love that
Dr. Edmonson : it's so true. I mean, it's
so hard to do. Right? I, I, you know, I talk about all these things 'cause I'm not yet good at it. Right. Guilty, right? Here's a way
to think about it. It's very hard to learn. I think most people would say, yeah, I wanna learn.
I wanna be a learner. It's very hard to learn if you already know we are. Hardwired to have this experience of knowing, right, that we, we mistake our mental models as reality itself. Right? Those are the mental models that are in our heads that we mistake for reality itself.
Dr. Juna: you know, especially highly educated people like doctors and PhDs and lawyers and you know, we are supposed to know certain things, but then at the same time, you have to keep that, you know, in Zen they say beginner's mind,
Dr. Edmonson : Right
right?
Dr. Juna: And it's that person who can come up with a new idea. That nobody has thought of before, because otherwise we have all these cognitive biases that are
keeping us from seeing what's
Dr. Edmonson : yes. Yeah. And this is not the same as saying you have to sort of, you know, beginner's mind. It's not saying, oh, you have to abandon your expertise or not, not own your expertise. It's,
it's, uh, more of a. I have a valid point of view, right? After all, I have a great deal of expertise. I have a valid point of view, and I am almost certainly missing something. you can own your expertise, and you can say, Hey, but I'm still curious. I really wanna know about that stuff. I don't yet know.
Dr. Juna: Our blind spots.
Dr. Edmonson : Yep.
Dr. Juna: when I teach my students, who are high achieving perfectionist most of the time, I teach 'em about the neuroscience of the brain because the brain is actually inside your skull. It's an organ of perception. It's not a measure. It's not a physical measurement.
You're not taking the temperature of the room. The only part of our nervous system that actually takes accurate [00:26:00] chemical measure is our olfactory bulb, which actually is a chemo sensor, but everything else your brain is integrating and even the smell you're integrating into your memories. it brings up emotions, et cetera.
So your brain is really an organ of perception. It's not reality in the physical sense.
Dr. Edmonson : That's right. and we just have a hard time thinking about it that way. It's hard to recognize that I'm not just sitting here seeing reality.
I'm seeing the reflection of reality in my brain.
Dr. Juna: Yeah, based on our experiences, based on our past and our, know, what we learned and what we're used to the people we're around, et cetera. I wanna go back to that point you were making about, biases and, able to step outside of your expertise to see, you what else could be happening that I'm missing.
Jerome Groopman wrote that book called, How Doctors Think.
And he talks about that whole commission bias where you're, uh, acting instead of inact inaction. 'cause a patient comes to see you, you wanna do something, you wanna alleviate their pain, here's the medication, or you have satisfaction of search.
And this used to happen all the time with radiologists, , where you see something. A CAT scan or whatever and then you're done. 'cause you're like, oh, I found that huge tumor and now I'm done. You stop. Your brain just kind of relaxes. Yeah. He also talks about the availability error and the tendency to apply what
You commonly experience or see and making that diagnosis into that patient, like just fitting, the square block into a square hole and not really thinking outside of your, expertise.
I want to ask you about somebody like Sam Bankman Freed . Like how did all of these incredibly savvy businessmen and women make that kind of mistake and do you see a parallel in what I just talked about and that kind of
massive mistake?
Dr. Edmonson : you know, it's funny because it's often [00:28:00] hard to know where to draw the line or whe whe when you're trying to understand something from the outside, the extent to which something is fraud versus error. fraud, is the successful for a while, perpetration of a lie, right?
you know, uh, Bernie Madoff or, Theranos and you know, where you know, you're doing something and speaking about it in an untruthful way, in order to achieve a, a result. Uh, you know, is, is sort of, I really, really, honestly believe this would work. and it didn't
And, and of course it's not always clean cut either. Sometimes you have a little healthy or unhealthy mix of both. there There are certainly many preventable failures in business, that come from problematic incentives, complex systems, you new businesses, new ideas operating in very complex environments, maybe not fully aware of their interdependencies with so many other factors in the world that then, you know, lead to these sort of catastrophic outcomes.
Dr. Juna: So would you call that a massive, complex failure? Because so many people were on board with the same
idea and they just couldn't see the reality
of the
Dr. Edmonson : Yes, it's certainly a complex failure. I don't think it's a basic failure. I don't, I don't believe it's, um, intelligent, although one, it would, could be tempting to say, oh yeah, it's new territory. We don't know about this crypto stuff and so on. But then to have an intelligent failure in new territory. You have to have high quality conversations, you know, with, you know, honest, open debate. Really trying to get to the bottom of what works, what doesn't, doesn't work. get, diverse voices into the mix and try to really make the very best betts you can.
Dr. Juna: So I think what we're taking away from here, if we could summarize some of the big points that you wanna make and how people can apply it to their own lives, is [00:30:00] to really become aware of some of your own fallacies. Maybe learn a little bit about your brain. Read, write kind of wrong, and um, you know, figure out what it is that are your shortcomings just as
part of being human
right and understanding your cognitive biases, that would be step one,
Dr. Edmonson : Absolutely.
I decided to call the last chapter of the book, you know, where you try to bring everything together, thriving as a fallible human being because it's all about being healthy and happy and, and, and successful and in various ways, and I I think it's harder to be those things when you don't come to terms with the fact that you're a fallible human being.
Dr. Juna: now, what do you think about AI coming in and maybe helping us be less fallible,
Dr. Edmonson : Oh, that's a great question. I mean, first thing I think about AI is it is genuinely new territory. I mean, we've had AI for a long time, but the, some of the new technologies that have come out are genuinely new. they're far ahead of where a lot of experts thought we would be at this moment in time. So we are standing in this brave new world. That means by necessity there will be lots of experiments. That means by reality there will be failures, right? There will be things that, don't work out as hoped or expected. but we'll muddle through, we'll, we'll try to, um, figure out what works and how to make AI a good team member and how to make ai, helpful in Especially in doing some of the things that feel like they're hard and drudgery
and drudgery because of like enormous amounts of detail and
Dr. Juna: that's an excellent point because the human brain is like, we're just wired to, really create Connect. and it's hard to do those drudgery things like driving.
Dr. Edmonson : Right driving and, and
or, or doing a, you know, a massive, report on some area that takes, requires a lot of background reading and, you know, then pulling together details from here and there [00:32:00] and making sure you get the citations correctly. I mean, that seems to be something that one could get help with.
Dr. Juna: Mm-hmm. , and there's a lot of fields in medicine where I think it's gonna be so helpful, you know, because there's that fallacy, you know, there's that study
he's Harvard trapped in Drew. He did the gorilla study. The
attentional gorilla study.
Dr. Edmonson : Yeah
Dr. Juna: So he put a, a little image of a gorilla on a chest CT scan and had radiologists read it, but he also put a, a large lung cancer and 83% of the radiologists miss the gorilla.
'cause again, like it's in context, you
don't look for a gorilla.
Dr. Edmonson : Looking for a gorilla
and once you find the tumor, you think you're done.
Dr. Juna: Yes. Well, your brain does, and again, there's that fallacy, like it, you either tell the physician, oh, there's something wrong with you, you missed something, or, well, your brain doesn't see that because sometimes you
don't see the keys that are in front of you.
Dr. Edmonson : The confirmation bias leads us to tend to see what we expect to see rather than what's really there.
Dr. Juna: Exactly, yes. What we expect. Yes. Uh, the framework of the
mind,
if you could go back to your teen years, or you could just imagine yourself as a mom telling your teenagers, knowing what you know, having written all these books and being an expert in psychological safety an
fallacy, what would you tell
Dr. Edmonson : The number one thing I wish I could have told my younger self is don't worry so much. Don't sweat it. Don't be so anxious about how it will all turn out. It will all turn out. Right. It was, I, I wasted so much time worrying about failing at this and that or oh, just . Bundle of anxiety and, and I don't think any of it really helps.
Maybe some of it helps you study because you don't wanna flunk this out, but, but most of it was unhelpful and draining
Dr. Juna: Mm-hmm. .What's good? Anxiety then? Something that you
can take action towards. Problem solve.
Dr. Edmonson : yeah, good anxiety is the sort of rational anxiety, which is,
okay, this [00:34:00] is a calculus exam. It's hard. It will take effort. So now I'm gonna sit down and do it. That anxiety is okay, you know, calculus exam, I'm so stressed out about it. I can't even sit down to think and do the studying. , it closes the mind rather than says, yeah, you're right. is worth a little bit of attention and hard work.
Dr. Juna: And what would you tell yourself in your older years, in your twenties when things are changing? Maybe you graduated from college and I know you worked with Buckminster Fuller, right? The Go Ds a dome. That's incredible. And did he show you anything as a mentor about making and like trying new things?
And that must've been
Dr. Edmonson : Yes. In fact, he was wonderful about, he used to talk about the only mistake we make as human beings is thinking we're not supposed to make mistakes. Right? That, that, you know, that's just, it's sort of an an error. He wrote an a little essay called Mistake. Mystique, right? That, you know, mistakes are part of being human. He said, you have a left foot and a right foot. For a reason, right? We're not, if, you know, if nature had wanted us to just go in a straight line, we'd be, we'd be on a wheel, right? But you're gonna go this way and you're gonna go that way, and you're gonna, find your way. through, so he would talk gleefully about the first time he built a geodesic dome that he hoped would stand.
Of course, it just collapsed immediately and thought, okay, great. What do we learn? So that was my first. Mentor my first, um, boss, my first job, that was my first job. Right? A guy who
just kept
Dr. Juna: amazing.
Dr. Edmonson : from failures and how, you know,
Dr. Juna: He told you to just show up or
something, right? And you
Dr. Edmonson : right? Yeah. Just show up and, and learn and experiment and, have an adventure with this, you know, one and precious life.
Dr. Juna: What happened to that g d?
Dr. Edmonson : Well, you know, they're everywhere. If you look around, you'll see them everywhere. They're over, oil tanks. they're many stadiums. anytime you want to span, large diameter with, without an ability to have internal supporting be, uh, elements
columns. cause you
don't want columns [00:36:00] in the way, the chances are you've got some kind of triangulated, geodesic structure.
Dr. Juna: Wow, that's so incredible that you worked there. And you also talk about Idea and Pixar and all of these places where creativity rules, but it's a lot of high tech,
technical skills. So what did you learn from, investigating these? I love Id, at one
point I wanted to apply to them during my medical career.
Dr. Edmonson : Well, I love their cheerfulness on the, you know, the positive affect at IDEO and, and Pixar in places like that. There's just a kind of energy around, creativity and a non self-consciousness about, about failure. Right. They understand that's the sport they're playing, right?
They're playing a sport where if you're doing it well, you will have failures.
Dr. Juna: Wow. So if you are gonna tell your kids how to do this, how would you tell them? If they're little kids, where would, when would you
Dr. Edmonson : Mine are, yeah, mine are in their twenties.
But, um, uh, first of all, you know, Think about, the things you're really interested in. You know, don't, do the things other you think other people want you to do, or other people should, will think you're, you know, good or successful if you do them. Like what do you really care about?
What's the difference that you wanna make? I think a life well lived is a life where have the opportunity to make a difference in something you believe matters.
you know, that can be the health of Your fellow human beings, you know, that can be, um, you know, renewable energy and the sustainability of our habitat. that can be, teaching kids to, into, um, humans, be part of society, right? It's, there's so many different things you can do that matter, and it's really about Spending the time to think about what you care about and then being willing to work really hard to make a contribution to it.
Dr. Juna: I love that. One last question. You know, babies, trying to walk and they will fall down. . A million times and not complain. how do we squash
that out of a child [00:38:00] and, why are we so afraid to develop? Because we're obviously curious as a human brain.
That's what brains are curious and why. What can we do to prevent that?
Dr. Edmonson : I love, I love that you asked this 'cause it is true. It's you, your child is learning to walk and no parent would ever think, oh my gosh, they shouldn't fail. They should just stand right up and walk. You know? And, and we, we love it. We enjoy it, we laugh with them. We have a lovely time. Um, and then fast forward, Somehow we get it into our heads that they have to be, they can't have failure
They have to succeed because we erroneously believe like the stakes are so high and you know, if anything goes wrong, you know, they won't succeed. They won't. That won't have a good life. Right? Well, that's not true. Right? In
fact, um, this is why I think, I mean there's many domains where this is true, but sports for instance, right?
One of the, one of the good things about sports is, you'll experience a lot of failure, right? If you, if you are on a, um, a baseball team or a soccer team or play tennis, you will You know, lose almost as many gains as you win or maybe more. And it's, and you understand of course, right, that's part of the activity. And you develop your failure muscles. parents make the mistake of trying to shield their kids from failure, trying to prevent failure at all costs, what they really prevent is learning, you know, stretching, adventure and even joy.
Dr. Juna: So do you think that if we support it in that way, that we could raise kids that don't feel the pain of solving their first calculus problem?
Dr. Edmonson : Yeah, I think so. I had two of them. The older one had this tremendous ability to just engage with hard things for the longest time at two, you know, the big, the jigsaw puzzles, he just wouldn't stop at at 14 or 15, he would just sit there with a math problem for two hours Right.
In a way that honestly, so many of his peers would be distracted and want to go off text, whatever. Right. But, and the younger one I think had an unusual appetite for hard things [00:40:00] just for, that joy of mastering something hard. I mean, they both did. and
Dr. Juna: Do they have times when things don't come easily to them? my kids were, are very smart, but if something doesn't come easily,
sometimes they get frustrated. When they were little,
Dr. Edmonson : Yeah. They experienced that.
Dr. Juna: if we could reframe that
Dr. Edmonson : let's say something. Suddenly doesn't come easily, right? You're, you're used to things coming easily and suddenly there's a challenge on your plate that doesn't seem to yield easily. And one, you know, we can come in and sort of swoop it away and spare them from that struggle or give them the space to keep at it. And wow, you know what, joy, when you finally master it, I mean, there's much more joy in mastering something hard than in checking off the thing. That's easy.
Dr. Juna: Wonderful.
I wanna thank you and I wanna shout out to Caity Begg, founder of Authentic Social for Connecting Us, because both of our conversations, hers and ours were amazing and I'm so grateful to have met you. Thank you so much for your time.
Dr. Edmonson : A pleasure. Thank you for having me.
