Intellectually Curious - Edition 6
Welcome to the 6th Edition of the Intellectually Curious Newsletter. I would like to thank all the subscribers and those who are visiting for the first time do take time to read the previous editions and subscribe so that you don’t miss the future editions.
Book for the edition:
The most difficult thing in this world is to admit that we have made a mistake when doing whatever we are doing. Second most difficult thing is to learn from that and then incorporate the learning into our routine so that we don’t repeat the same. But, as a normal human being this is the most difficult thing to accomplish.
Will it be easy to master this practice if we have a good coach who will guide us on how to be better in this aspect ? I think so.
It is our luck if that coach is someone who is very well established researcher in this area and has written a fascinating book that will help everyone of us to learn from our failures.
The book is https://ig.ft.com/sites/business-book-award/books/2023/winner/right-kind-of-wrong-by-amy-edmondson/ by Amy Edmondson
Amy says denying any failure is a habitual response that we have learnt from our childhood and that when combined with societal pressure of not acknowledging failures for the fear of being ridiculed and how most of the corporations function turns this lack of learning into a huge lost opportunity. To quote from the book: “ It is impossible to calculate the wasted time and resources created by our failure to learn from our failures”.
According to the author, failures are definitely stepping stones towards success and failures are the ‘right kind of wrong’.
Amy during her early research came up with the concept of psychological safety. If that is missing then no one who will be ready to admit that there are failures and we can never learn from the right kind of wrong. So one of the crucial concept for learning successfully from failures is psychological safety of the individual or a team in their organization or social setting. Once this is established the culture of right kind of wrong can be created and the organist or society will grow to be a better place.
Some key pointers are:
When you gain valuable information that was not available in any other way, then such failures are termed as good ones.
This information can be very minuscule, it is still a learning and that is the most important aspect of learning from failure. And, learning from failure is the most difficult task to master
Successful innovators or teams that learn from failures are not caught up with their aversion to failure, eliminate confusion due to the range of failures and completely provide a psychologically safe environment so that there is no fear due to the failure.
The author classifies 3 types of failures:
Intelligent failures:
When you are attempting to do anything new in any area – science, medicine, engineering etc., you will come across Intelligent failures as you are doing these for the first time and the entire path is clouded by uncertainty but the success could be completely outsized. As failures are costly, we need to use it judiciously, take decisions to stop it faster and do it behind closed doors so that reputations are not spoiled. Many failures move from intelligent to stupid as the teams, leaders and individuals are caught in sunk cost fallacy. Another important part of intelligent failures is also to learn from the failures of earlier pioneers and avoiding them. Understanding the data from intelligent failures are very critical as failure in one area can be successful in another area.
The author has shared interesting case studies across a spectrum of areas to drive the point and it is very well articulated.
Basic failures:
These are failures that are completely preventable, but it keeps happening due to lack of attention, over confidence and making assumptions. These failures are completely unproductive - wasting time, energy and resources. Some of these basic failures can become catastrophic. They have to be prevented at any cost. Many of these failures happen due to mistakes. Simple basic failures are never accepted and always a reason given why it is not our mistake that it even happened. Here comes a psychological bias called fundamental attribution error – when mistakes are done by others it is due to their ability and character but when the same mistake is done by us, it is due to external factors. Preventive maintenance is a key thing to avoid basic failures. Here again we face a psychological barrier called temporal discounting – we delay difficult tasks that needs to be done immediately and procrastinate forever – from simple things like maintaining air pressure in our car tires to performing a tedious maintenance task of an equipment that has been giving enough indications of failing.?
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Complex failures:
Happens due to multiple small failures adding up to produce a big catastrophic failure. It always happen in a familiar setting. These failures are not something that would have happened when the complex failure happened, but may be adding from a longer time frame. Some of the systems the way they are designed have become so complex the failures are inevitable. So when building large systems, we need make sure that they are loosely coupled and not tightly connected. The complex failures always start with an assessment of failure that is not clear and cannot be substantiated with data, so most of the individuals and organization try to suppress these type of initial diagnosis mentioning that the person is worried too much. But to learn, we need to allow these kind of diagnosis and then try to figure why that possibility did not happen. That will give us more valuable insights than trying to suppress calls that are raised based on experience and not on data.
Learning from failures:
To be successful in managing failures and learning from them, we need to learn new way of thinking – being a learn it all from being a know it all. Like mentioned earlier, when someone else fails we give an elaborate reasoning on why they failed and never learn from it and repeat the same mistake ourselves. Developing a growth mindset is crucial. Being self-aware is the first right step in identifying and learning from failures. Next important thing is understand the situation that we are in and shift between execution orientation and learning orientation so that we have the permission to learn and experiment. Understand what is at stake in that situation is really critical and accordingly we need to move the dial for learning and experimenting. Next crucial learning is thinking in systems. Sometimes this is completely missing and results in more errors and mistakes. For any decision that we take we need to understand who and what else will be impacted and the consequences that will arise in the future. This particular thinking is important to resist quick fixes and jumping to conclusions.
To be successful as an organization or a society we need to build a healthy failure culture that rewards the right kind of wrongs and encourage everyone to share their failures so that collectively we are moving forward.
Right kind of wrong is a very practical book, as I mentioned earlier, it is like having one of the most celebrated researchers into failures literally coaching you on failing and learning from the failures in a positive way!
This is a book that should be in your library and one that we should keep referring to regularly.
Recent Technology Trend:
The first AI Software engineer was announced last week – Devin:
The impact of this will be known in the coming 1-2 years depending on how accurate the AI engineer is becoming.
Curiosity of the Week:
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”
— Richard P. Feynman
So let us learn from the master:
Hope you enjoyed this edition!
Do share your feedback on the newsletter!
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Well laid out nuggets of wisdom !