0:00

Failure is not an option. Success is

0:02

key. Have you often

0:04

heard those types of encouragements? From

0:07

coaches, parents, teachers, or even your

0:09

boss? Yet, who has

0:11

never failed? And

0:14

more importantly, isn't it counterproductive

0:16

to deny failure? Today,

0:18

I'm very glad to share a

0:20

different and much more efficient conception

0:22

as I received Amy Elman's son.

0:25

As she just launched her new book,

0:27

Right Kind of Wrong, the

0:29

sons of failing well. So,

0:32

I mean, what I love to do when

0:34

I get started is usually asking my guests

0:36

a little bit about the way and where

0:38

they grew up and how

0:40

their family environment may have them

0:42

building their worldview, actually. So,

0:44

what is it like for you, Amy, to

0:46

be a child? Where did you

0:49

grow up and what is the environment where

0:51

psychology and the values you defend today were

0:53

already prominent in your

0:55

home place? Yes,

0:57

I was very fortunate in

1:00

my selection of parents. I'm

1:02

one of four children. I'm the second. I

1:05

have an older brother, just a little bit older,

1:07

and two younger sisters. I grew up in

1:09

New York City in

1:13

a time where we had enormous

1:15

freedom. I think it's

1:18

astonishing to look back. My brother and I

1:21

would go to school together on the city

1:23

bus with our bus pass at

1:25

five, six, seven years old without

1:28

adults. I don't know. On

1:30

our own. We knew how to cross the street. By

1:33

the time I was a teenager, my

1:36

friends and I would go to museums. We'd go to

1:38

each other's houses, do our homework. So,

1:42

it was a childhood, no cars. I

1:44

mean, cars were in the city, but not we didn't know a

1:46

car. We didn't need a car. It was

1:48

a time of just great freedom

1:51

and even empowerment, I suppose.

1:54

My parents were

1:56

hardworking. My father was a manager. at

2:00

Time Inc. with

2:02

a particular, he had an engineering degree, then an

2:05

MBA, he had a particular interest in

2:07

technology management, did the sort of printing

2:09

technology side of things. My

2:11

mother was a teacher at elementary

2:14

school and then later middle school. And

2:18

they were very generous

2:21

people whose, their

2:24

values were firmly

2:26

about service. And

2:28

I would say, you know,

2:30

in some, they didn't use this term exactly, but making

2:33

a better world. I mean, you very,

2:36

they were, they were very deeply

2:40

religious and, and raised Catholic,

2:46

far as the eye could see. And so there

2:49

was, I think there was, you know, I could come

2:51

home with a bad grade. I didn't, but

2:53

I could. I couldn't

2:55

get away with being, you know,

2:57

mean or selfish. That I understood

3:00

pretty quickly was not the way

3:02

to get attention or, or

3:04

love. Yeah. So it

3:07

looks like an interesting combination, right? Between

3:09

a teacher, which

3:11

I think you probably inherited some

3:13

of that, I guess, and

3:15

also an engineer manager as well, combined

3:17

together. And they listening to you, you

3:20

said it was a wonderful

3:22

place with face, with generosity, with

3:25

hard work as well. So

3:27

probably shaping pretty well some of your core

3:29

values as of today, Amy, isn't it?

3:31

No question about it. Yeah.

3:35

So how did, when and how did

3:37

you actually come up with

3:40

this idea about the work you

3:42

are doing today? And I'm sure it's been

3:44

a long process. There might have been a

3:46

different set of milestone. What have been the

3:48

shaping moments in your mind

3:50

to get you where you

3:53

started professionally? Well,

3:55

I start, you know, when I, when I finished my

3:58

college education, I went

4:01

to work as an engineer for

4:03

Buckminster Fuller, who was a

4:06

great thinker, educator, inventor

4:09

in his own right. And his single-minded

4:11

idea was we're here to make a

4:14

difference, we're here to make a better

4:16

world through design. And my

4:18

small role was I was basically

4:21

consumed with geodesic math,

4:24

you know, for three

4:27

years and just

4:29

making the design simpler and

4:31

then building, I'd occasionally build

4:33

models and then occasionally we'd

4:35

build full-scale prototypes. And

4:38

it could not have been more

4:40

fun. And he too was just,

4:42

he was a remarkably joyful and

4:44

generous person. And he gave me

4:46

all sorts of credit that I

4:48

probably didn't deserve. But he spoiled

4:50

me for, you know, after that, you

4:53

know, what other job can

4:55

you possibly do when you're

4:57

sort of boss, who

4:59

was by the way, four times my age, was

5:03

so generous with credit and praise.

5:05

And so that we believed at the

5:08

time, I believed that what I was doing mattered.

5:10

Okay, so whatever. But I

5:16

committed to, after he died, I committed to write

5:18

a book to make some of his

5:20

technical work more accessible, called The Fuller

5:22

Explanation. And it was a stupid

5:24

thing to do in many ways because

5:26

I wasn't a writer, I didn't know how to write.

5:29

But you did it. But I did it, right?

5:31

So I did it. Okay, so, you know, and

5:33

in a way I knew that if

5:35

I didn't sort of, that I had

5:37

to give back in a small way. And I had

5:39

to kind of, I had, I had

5:41

all my hard drive was full, and I had to put

5:44

it somewhere, or I wouldn't be able to move on. And

5:46

then, and then after

5:48

that, I got a job, I mean, almost by

5:50

happen sense, I was giving a talk about Fuller's work

5:54

at a big meeting in Aspen, Colorado,

5:57

and an entrepreneur and wonderful man

5:59

and. thinker named Larry

6:01

Wilson, who had founded a company

6:03

called Wilson Learning and was in the

6:06

process of founding another one called Pecos

6:08

River Learning Center asked

6:10

me to come work for

6:12

him. So this is how I got

6:15

into organizations and business and I had,

6:17

you know, and, and I loved it.

6:20

And he was, Larry was such

6:22

a, you

6:24

know, such a comprehensive

6:27

thinker in terms of the sort

6:29

of psychology of human beings. He

6:31

read widely and he collected thinkers

6:34

and he, and so I

6:36

learned a lot from him. I learned a lot from the people he

6:39

brought together to try to figure

6:41

things out about organizations. And

6:43

again, I learned so much, but I

6:46

also realized, I realized

6:48

this was my field, slowly but surely,

6:50

I hadn't understood my field. And then

6:52

I thought, well, I have no, no

6:54

psychology background, no business

6:56

background, really, other than, you

6:59

know, the, the imposter

7:02

syndrome was loud and clear in and out

7:05

of some of the world's largest companies. And

7:07

so I thought, and some of the people that we

7:09

had, that we brought together

7:11

in these meetings, share

7:14

ideas were professors

7:16

at Harvard, at

7:19

MIT, and elsewhere,

7:21

Stanford. And I

7:23

thought, you know, it's sort of a blinding

7:26

flash of the obvious, like, how

7:29

do you, how do you get to do that? That

7:31

that's what I want to do. And one of

7:33

them was Peter Senge, another was Chris Arjura said

7:35

shine. And they all said, well, you know, you

7:38

have to you have to do you have to

7:40

apply to you should apply, you should apply to the PhD

7:42

program in organizational behavior. I said, well,

7:45

what's that? This

7:47

was, you know, just slightly before the internet

7:49

existed. So wasn't that easy to find

7:52

information about things like

7:54

this? So yeah, I just sort

7:56

of blindly trusted and then applied

7:58

and was I'd rather

8:01

closing the window here surprised when

8:05

I got in, and then probably

8:07

even more surprised

8:09

but more slowly when I never

8:11

left. Yeah. So,

8:13

would you say to summarize that kind of

8:15

a learning curve

8:18

that was a calling actually early

8:20

on? Is it a calling? I

8:22

think so. I think so.

8:25

Because there's something about the

8:27

way I look at things

8:30

analytically, feel

8:32

them emotionally, and

8:34

strongly believe that we can make

8:37

organizations better. I mean, there was an insight

8:41

I remember having while working with

8:43

Larry that was along the lines

8:45

of, who? People

8:48

spend most of their waking hours at work.

8:52

And we can make it better. We can make

8:54

work better. And of course,

8:57

you've got to make performance of the

8:59

organization better or it won't be around

9:01

to provide that work and

9:04

to provide what it provides to customers

9:07

or society or what

9:09

have you. Yeah. And

9:11

there's so much building in the same value

9:13

of this quality of work we need to

9:16

bring together every day. So, let's

9:18

dive into your work a bit. And let's

9:20

start, of course, the wonderful work you've done.

9:22

You keep doing psychological safety. Just

9:24

sharing with our listeners, I think a quote

9:26

I love quite a

9:29

bit. You said, psychological safety is a belief

9:31

that one will not be punished or

9:33

mediated for speaking up with ideas, questions,

9:36

concerns, or mistakes. And

9:38

all of those on the podcast

9:40

listening who had experienced the business

9:42

world know that through this notion

9:44

may seem very logical. It's

9:47

not always so easy to speak up. One's

9:49

mine, right? It's not.

9:52

Yeah, please. No, I would say, in fact,

9:55

I'd go further. I'd say

9:58

it's rarely. easy

10:00

to speak up. I mean, with

10:02

something awkward, difficult,

10:05

uncertain, because the ever

10:07

present potential is there, that if

10:10

you ask that question or offer

10:12

that dissenting view or admit a

10:14

mistake, that the reaction

10:16

will not be positive.

10:18

And in fact, it may be very

10:20

negative. And sometimes we, you know, we

10:23

imagine worse reactions than actually happened.

10:25

But it is always easier

10:28

to hold back than to speak up. For sure.

10:30

For sure. I think until we

10:32

sort of acknowledge that psychological

10:35

and social reality, we

10:38

won't get anywhere, right? It's always easier.

10:40

So if your team or your

10:42

organization doesn't have psychological safety, it doesn't

10:44

mean you're broken or you're bad. It

10:46

means you're normal. It's just

10:48

normal. It's the default.

10:52

And so if you do have it,

10:54

it's very likely that some people are

10:56

doing things very

10:58

well and very right, but in

11:00

an unusual way, for instance, yes,

11:03

they will be more likely, you know,

11:05

the leaders of teams or departments will

11:07

be more likely to express

11:10

genuine curiosity, they'll be more

11:12

likely to acknowledge their own shortcomings,

11:14

you know, they're as as role

11:17

models, they will be, they

11:20

will be showing up as as

11:24

inclusive and curious and, and

11:26

appropriately humble about the challenge that

11:29

lies ahead. And that

11:31

is contagious. Yeah,

11:34

it is. And I like you

11:36

know, Amy to actually get into specifics of

11:38

one project, which is very famous, I think

11:40

in your, in your learning

11:42

curve as well. And the company I

11:44

get to know from, you know, from

11:46

a competitive standpoint as well,

11:48

Google. And

11:51

so in 2017, your project

11:53

Aristotle, you you worked

11:57

with Google to understand actually, when it takes, I

11:59

think to contribute to my performance teams, right?

12:01

No, no, no, yes. I mean, yes

12:04

and no. So the one part

12:06

of that story that is not true is I

12:09

didn't work with them. And

12:11

to me, it makes the story

12:13

even better. Because if I've been

12:15

working... You studied them from the outside. Yes. Well,

12:18

I didn't even... I had nothing to do with it. I

12:20

knew nothing of it until I read about it

12:22

in The New York Times. Oh,

12:24

I get it. You know, in February of

12:26

2016, special

12:30

long article by Charles Duhigg, what Google learned

12:32

from its quest to build the perfect team,

12:35

why some teams thrive and others falter. So

12:38

first I thought, uh-oh, what is it? Because

12:40

I'm a team expert, I should know this. And

12:44

then long story, I read and read and

12:46

read. And then it turns out what they

12:48

found was using my

12:50

measure, thankfully, that psychological safety

12:52

was the strongest

12:54

predictor of team performance at

12:57

Google. And why I say it's

12:59

a better story is because I

13:01

think if I'd been involved with the project, I would have said, well,

13:03

we better look and see. I think

13:05

it'll be psychological safety. And that would be leading

13:07

the witness. But in this case,

13:10

they were enormously open-minded.

13:13

Nobody went into that study thinking,

13:15

oh, psychological safety. They were looking

13:17

at education levels, gender mix. They

13:20

were looking at everything you can

13:22

possibly imagine. And

13:24

then nothing worked. But

13:27

when they put psychological safety into

13:29

the model, things fell into

13:31

place. So that wonderful

13:34

project, Project Aristotle, and

13:37

the attention it got, led

13:39

me to then say, because people

13:41

started talking about Google's sort of

13:43

discovery of psychological safety, that didn't bother

13:46

me too much. I

13:49

guess, I thought, well, my academic work

13:51

had been 16 years earlier

13:53

on this. I thought, I've

13:57

said and done what I need to say. It

13:59

had led to... a robust

14:01

academic literature with some uptake,

14:03

particularly in healthcare, but some

14:05

uptake in the real world.

14:08

But with Google's study

14:11

and the publication of it in the New

14:14

York Times, that led to an explosion of

14:16

interest. So that was, to me,

14:18

that was the motivation to write the Fearless

14:20

Organization. Because I thought, I guess there's

14:22

an appetite to learn about

14:24

this construct, you know, what it is,

14:27

what it isn't, what we know,

14:29

what is the, does the

14:31

literature say, you know, Google's study is not

14:33

peer reviewed, but there are many, many peer reviewed

14:35

studies and on from there.

14:37

So it made a big difference in my life. Got

14:40

you, got you. It was really a trigger of

14:42

your work and accelerating your work actually. So you

14:45

know, as we reflect myself on my own leadership,

14:47

John and Microsoft, that's why I mentioned tech, sector

14:50

is familiar to me. I realized

14:52

the much difference leadership and a leader can

14:54

make to create a safe

14:56

environment for teams. And like

14:58

former, because I left Microsoft a few weeks ago actually,

15:01

former manager and friend Satya Nadella, CEO,

15:03

good start is CEO 10 years ago,

15:05

it's been 10 years now Satya is

15:07

a CEO Microsoft. When he

15:09

started his job, he's a senior leadership team, which was part

15:12

of, you know, he made it very clear that, you

15:15

know, senior leadership meetings every week, we have a

15:17

meeting every Friday actually. It

15:19

was not about it was the smartest in

15:21

the team, in the meeting, it was not

15:23

about that. Which used to be kind of

15:26

the case, that we'd say in the past at Microsoft.

15:28

But it was more about a learning of us here for

15:30

each one of us to learn from

15:32

each other and to learn from people coming from

15:34

the outside, from our customers, from

15:37

partners, from ecosystem, to

15:39

really understand where Microsoft can improve and

15:41

where we are struggling and where we

15:43

could be trying to do some more.

15:45

And inevitably what I noticed

15:47

of course, months after months, and of

15:50

course there's a lot of more work, as you know, done

15:52

on top of that, not just an observation. We

15:55

saw that when more junior people from our

15:57

teams were coming to present with senior leadership

15:59

team. which is a very stressful exercise

16:01

for many teams, you know, going to the

16:04

top executive committee and presenting something is a

16:06

big deal. Actually, people

16:08

over time become more relaxed and

16:10

speak up and started to open

16:12

up and share a lot of

16:15

challenges, opportunities. And so I relate

16:17

100% to what you

16:20

do, what you've said. And

16:23

I believe there's so much potential in

16:25

measuring, assessing, understanding where you start

16:28

and where you can bring your position to each

16:30

level. Yes. And

16:33

learning. I mean, it's really and I love

16:35

the emphasis on growth mindset. It's, you

16:38

know, a growth mindset flourishes in a

16:40

more psychologically safe environment, just as you

16:43

described. And it it

16:46

also fosters psychological safety. Right. So it's

16:48

a it's a kind of positive

16:50

feedback loop because ultimately it's

16:53

all about continuous learning, both

16:56

improvement learning and innovation learning.

16:58

But it's that it's that

17:00

requirement to never pause and

17:02

think we've got this. We

17:05

know we've got all the answers now. Let's

17:07

just execute. We

17:10

have to execute. But we're executing with

17:12

a learning mindset where everything

17:14

that happens is data. Yes.

17:17

So going back to you, Amy, I always

17:20

love to ask some more personal professional questions.

17:22

Well, if I may, can

17:24

you recall and share with us some specific moments

17:26

in your life, personal professional life

17:29

where you felt about

17:31

psychological safety missing or

17:33

actually being embraced collectively?

17:36

And how did you react to that? What was your

17:38

role? Well, you know, I give us

17:40

a couple of stories. I mean, part

17:42

of as I said, it's

17:44

almost the you know, the good luck

17:47

and the privilege that I had accidentally

17:49

of the first working for Buckminster Fuller,

17:51

who just I didn't know the

17:54

term psychological safety, nor did he. But

17:56

it was it was just and

17:59

this is of. at the time, you have

18:01

to remember he was very famous and

18:03

very widely respected. So could have been

18:05

super easy for me to be

18:07

just terrified or, or, or quiet or

18:10

holding back, but when I look

18:12

back on it, I worked in

18:14

and just a, with

18:16

maybe seven other people, a

18:18

remarkably psychologically safe environment. So I,

18:21

that was imprinting for me. That was

18:23

my, uh, you know, that

18:25

was my, my first job post university. And

18:27

it was, um, it

18:31

implicitly taught me what work environments should

18:33

be like to bring out the best in

18:35

people. And, and he became a role model,

18:37

I guess, for you, right? He was a

18:39

role model. He had been a role model.

18:41

I knew of his work. I'd seen him speak. He

18:43

had been a role model, but then, you know, if

18:46

people say never meet your hero, well, that's just not

18:48

the case here at all. You know,

18:50

in, in getting to know him and

18:53

spending, uh, three years working for him.

18:56

I, my, my affection

18:59

and respect and, you know, admiration

19:01

only increased. It just didn't, it didn't

19:03

change at all. Right. He was still, he

19:05

was still a hero, but, but also a

19:08

friend. And, and so,

19:10

and then, you know, strangely really

19:12

to be, to repeat that experience with

19:14

Larry Wilson, um, who I fortunately,

19:16

I, I dedicated my book teaming to Larry

19:18

like at the last minute, because, you know,

19:20

you're supposed to, you dedicate your first book

19:23

to your parents and your second tier spouse.

19:25

But, you know, at that, at that last

19:27

minute, I thought, no, this book

19:29

would not exist. My career would not exist.

19:31

It worked not for Larry. So much of

19:33

my research kind of added data

19:35

to things I had picked up from him.

19:38

And then I was very grateful. I did because

19:40

he died about, um, a month or

19:43

so later and apparently

19:45

meant a lot to him, but, but, um,

19:48

but then just again, here I

19:50

had this at the time, very

19:52

accomplished, very successful, very

19:54

brilliant. Person, very

19:56

warm. Um, who. seemed

20:00

to think that I was

20:02

adding value, right? Who was

20:05

grateful and appreciative and, you

20:07

know, it was fun and it was

20:10

just a learning environment where he was

20:12

fascinated by ideas. Joyful. You know, and

20:14

it was not that everything worked out

20:16

all the time, not at all, but

20:18

it was just, it

20:21

was infectious, right? That, and

20:23

so, and in many, so many of

20:25

the companies where we were

20:28

doing our sort of consulting

20:30

and training work, I

20:33

realized this isn't what's going on here, right?

20:35

It's a little different here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

20:37

So, so maybe building on that if you,

20:40

if I may get any, could

20:42

you share a story without even naming the company

20:44

if you're not, of course, a lot

20:47

of that, which I fully realize, understand, but

20:49

just to give us some colors about

20:52

a context of a larger small organizations

20:54

and the kind of work, the

20:57

kind of awareness, the kind of

20:59

a gross you did, you enable

21:02

with your concept, bring them into

21:04

reality of a company. Well,

21:07

yes. So let's see, you know, it's funny. The

21:09

one that comes to mind is even before, again,

21:12

before I had this language before I was a

21:14

PhD student, when I was still working with Larry

21:17

and we were working with a large,

21:20

you know, global sort of building

21:24

controls and other electronics

21:27

company. And they made,

21:29

and we worked a lot with the senior

21:31

team and they had made an acquisition of

21:35

another company that had badly

21:38

failed. And, and

21:41

so they'd asked

21:43

Larry in to help facilitate a discussion of

21:45

sort of what we, what do we do

21:48

wrong and he was, he was good at

21:51

that and people were telling the truth. And

21:54

a man who was the CFO, the time

21:56

who had been relatively new to the

21:58

team from, from the outside. When

22:01

it was his turn to speak, he said, you know,

22:03

he spoke up and he said, I really let you

22:06

all down. He said, I can't,

22:08

you know, I'd come in, I had grave doubts

22:10

about this acquisition, but

22:12

I didn't say anything. Like I

22:14

held back and, you know, and,

22:17

and he said, I didn't want to

22:19

be the skunk at the picnic, which

22:21

was just one of these, you know, moments

22:24

of, you know, Eureka moments,

22:26

at least for me, because it's sort of like,

22:28

no, no, no. I mean, when, when you tell

22:31

the truth or share your doubts, you're

22:33

not a skunk. Yes. You're a

22:35

team mate, right? You're, you're,

22:37

you're, you're a person who's, who's

22:40

honestly expressing doubts. And

22:42

that could have literally could have saved,

22:44

you know, countless time

22:47

and money for this

22:49

company. And he was, you know, he was

22:51

quite emotional and, and,

22:54

and felt quite bad about it. But the truth

22:57

was, you know, the, it's a

22:59

little, it's not that hard. I mean, it is hard,

23:01

but you've got to invite people, it's hard to speak

23:03

up, but you've got to invite, you sort of have

23:05

to, a good process would say, Hey,

23:08

what are we missing? What if this went south?

23:10

What would have explained it, you know, the pre-mortem.

23:12

So, so that for me was a kind of a

23:14

moment, again, a little bit on the periphery, but I'd

23:17

say personally, I mean, what have, where have I

23:19

seen, I mean, I have,

23:25

I have worked with a

23:28

few companies, you know, and maybe

23:30

it's important to say that psychological

23:32

safety is, you

23:35

can think of it as a cultural factor,

23:37

but it's not, it's not

23:39

culture, it's climate. And the reason that

23:41

matters is that I have, I have

23:44

rarely been in an organization and

23:46

any organization of real size will,

23:50

will have heterogeneous psychological safety,

23:52

right? That it's, it's, it's

23:54

a, it's a very mixed

23:56

level. It's very mixed because middle

23:58

managers are very mixed. and even

24:00

department chairs or leaders

24:03

are very mixed. So it

24:06

is, you can be in a large

24:08

company where you'll

24:10

find a team that is

24:12

just thriving, learning, speaking up, and

24:16

experimenting, and then you'll be over

24:18

here, and everybody's very much holding

24:20

back rigid. And

24:23

so job one in trying to help

24:25

an organization is,

24:27

you know, I think it's recognizing that

24:29

this won't be top down, but it won't

24:31

be bottom up either. It'll

24:34

be both. It'll be

24:36

an invitation. But I

24:39

think that when the top is

24:41

passionate about

24:43

learning about the need for

24:46

more, then

24:49

they'll set the right example. And

24:52

then there's many ways to sort

24:54

of go about this, but it's

24:57

hard to bypass the need for

24:59

some, I'd say leadership or people

25:01

management, so skill

25:04

development. Ultimately, you know,

25:06

that's, I got

25:08

to do a study, part of

25:11

a study with McKinsey where, you know,

25:13

ultimately we found that only 26% of

25:16

people managers in a large number of companies were

25:19

both, were high challenge, high support, which in

25:21

my mind is really, you know, commitment

25:25

to excellence and psychological

25:27

safety, but that's again, not

25:29

the norm. And even

25:31

within organizations, there's lots of heterogeneity. So

25:33

how do you fix that? Are you

25:35

fix it with, you know, you

25:39

fix it with developing the very best

25:41

people managers you can at all levels.

25:44

And though they have to become learning

25:47

oriented, growth mindset oriented, inquiry

25:51

oriented, good listeners,

25:55

you know, hold people to

25:57

high standards. But so there's a kind of

25:59

a, And I think of it as

26:01

the leader's toolkit. I often talk about and

26:03

share these. And these are skills that

26:06

can be developed. Yes. I

26:09

more than agree with you, Emi, again. I've been

26:11

seeing that at hyperscale, with like 40,000 managers. I

26:14

think the notion of role modeling,

26:17

the notion as well of being exemplary as a

26:19

leader, at the top, at the middle, and

26:21

at the front line as well, and

26:23

the way to become conscious about some

26:26

of those key sub-skills, such as deep

26:28

listening, active listening, empathy.

26:32

And with an invite to learn

26:34

more from others is

26:38

something actually incredibly powerful

26:41

when you get it to work at

26:43

scale. So more to do there,

26:45

but it's fascinating. We have to

26:47

start somewhere. We have

26:49

to start somewhere for sure. Yeah. Yes. So

26:51

not only did you shake some assumptions again

26:53

about psychology and safety, which

26:56

we just discussed, you also worked

26:59

quite a bit on

27:02

basically the notion

27:04

of failing, which I love

27:06

talking about, because there's

27:09

been so much hype about

27:12

failing fast as a startup and how

27:14

wonderful it is to fail as well.

27:17

So in your latest book, you explore

27:19

this notion, which is more controversial, about

27:22

failure again. And it's

27:24

a complex notion, but how

27:27

would you redefine failure, Amy? Well,

27:30

so I redefined failure as

27:32

a fairly inclusive concept. It's

27:35

a construct with at

27:38

least three distinct archetypes, and only one

27:40

of them is really good and

27:45

worthy of celebration. That's what I

27:47

call intelligent failures. But see, I

27:49

think the problem, on the

27:51

one hand, I'm a fan

27:53

of fail fast, fail often in

27:55

the right conditions, in the scientific

27:57

laboratory, in maybe the startup world.

28:00

world. But

28:02

it is by no means a

28:05

slogan or a practice that you

28:07

would want to uniformly spread across

28:09

the world context, obviously. If

28:11

you said to a plant manager, fail

28:14

fast, fail often, she'd look at you like

28:17

you're crazy, right? I mean, Six

28:19

Sigma, we're going to get this

28:21

right. And similarly in

28:24

aviation, the

28:26

failures should be in the simulator and

28:28

not in the sky. And

28:31

so, you know, that's all obvious. And yet

28:33

I think our language around failure was

28:36

sloppy enough as to lead

28:39

people's real feelings and thoughts to go underground,

28:41

right? You know, if someone, if your boss

28:43

says fail fast, fail often, you're going to

28:45

go right. That's not what you really need.

28:48

Unless I think you have the

28:50

clear distinctions between types. And so

28:53

an intelligent failure, which is the kind that fail

28:55

fast, fail often refers to is really

28:59

only relevant in new territory. If we

29:02

already have a recipe, use it. It

29:04

is in new territory in pursuit of a goal

29:07

with a hypothesis and it just throwing

29:10

darts at the wall and no larger

29:14

than necessary. And I think that's just

29:16

a really important thing. It should not

29:18

be more expensive or

29:20

more risky in terms

29:23

of, you know, safety

29:25

or reputation than

29:28

absolutely necessary, which means

29:30

most, not all, but

29:32

most intelligent failures happen behind

29:34

closed doors. And

29:38

many startups, that's more public, but not

29:41

all of them are intelligent. We can look back in

29:43

time at that and be clear about that. But

29:45

many of them are and that's okay too. And

29:47

those are worthy

29:49

of celebration or clinical trials

29:52

that really had good reason to believe

29:54

they could work, but the last they didn't,

29:57

those are data. We take them seriously. we

30:00

figure out where to go next. And

30:02

as you said, I mean, these first type of failure, they

30:06

are kind of well-contained in terms of

30:08

risk management, right? Yes. We define a

30:10

beginning. There's a risk level I'm ready

30:12

to have with my team and organization,

30:15

but I'm not going to go beyond that

30:17

and being crazy and completely insane, right? That's

30:19

the first type of failure. And it's conscious,

30:21

right? We

30:24

discuss it explicitly. Here's the risk.

30:26

Here's why we believe it's worth

30:28

taking. And it

30:30

might work, but it might not. Either way,

30:32

we will have made the next step. So

30:36

would you mind talking about the two other types

30:38

of failures? Not at all, because when I say

30:40

failing well, it's equally to

30:42

pursue the good kind in

30:45

new territory, but also to do

30:47

everything in our collective power to

30:50

prevent the bad kind. So

30:52

I have basic failures and complex

30:55

failures. They both

30:57

occur in familiar territory,

30:59

relatively familiar territory. But basic

31:01

failures have a single cause,

31:04

usually human error. You text and

31:06

drive and get into an accident. That's a basic

31:08

failure. Don't do that. Let's avoid. Let's

31:12

have the discipline to engage in

31:14

best practice around in

31:17

familiar territory. And complex

31:19

failures are multi-causal. They

31:21

happen when a handful of contributors

31:23

come together in just the wrong

31:26

way. Yes. Often,

31:28

not always, but often they unfold over

31:31

time. And here's where psychological safety comes

31:33

back in, because often, kind of like

31:35

that very bad acquisition at

31:40

the company I told you about, that's

31:42

a complex failure in a way. The

31:44

reason that it wasn't stupid, it wasn't

31:46

straightforward, but it was, they

31:49

are often preventable if someone

31:52

speaks up in a timely way about a concern

31:54

that they have. Boeing

31:56

737 MAX comes to mind. But

32:02

the reason why they're not just

32:04

basic failures, you know, more

32:06

complicated is because generally any one of

32:08

the factors on its own would not

32:10

cause the failure. It's

32:13

the combination, it's the interaction effect.

32:15

Yes, yes. I love you

32:17

to talk about a very specific example which I think is

32:20

what we call a mission critical

32:22

scenario in healthcare, where I think

32:25

you got started in understanding the

32:28

cost and also the learning of

32:30

the failure. Would you mind telling

32:33

us the story about... Yeah.

32:35

The story of my research. Yeah,

32:38

of your own experience working in research,

32:40

absolutely in the healthcare environment. Yes, okay.

32:42

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So

32:45

when I was a PhD student, again,

32:48

with this broad interest in

32:50

learning and learning organizations, I

32:53

was given the opportunity to join

32:55

an existing and good-sized

32:57

study of medication errors

33:01

in two Harvard teaching hospitals. And I

33:05

said yes because of the obvious connection

33:07

between error and learning. So I thought,

33:09

okay, you've got to start

33:11

somewhere. So I'm going to go study. And

33:13

my research question was, do better teams, measured

33:17

according to a team survey that

33:19

had been developed by my advisor,

33:22

Richard Hackman, do better teams have

33:24

fewer medication errors? Now, that

33:27

seemed darn near

33:29

obvious to me because patient

33:32

care in hospitals is a

33:34

very interdependent, handoff-laden

33:36

process that better teamwork should

33:38

almost certainly lead to lower

33:40

error rates. And

33:42

so I did the survey month one,

33:45

waited for six months while trained nurse

33:47

investigators were collecting data on error rates.

33:51

I then had the chance to put

33:54

them all into my statistical model,

33:56

correlate the relationship between various teamwork

33:58

measures and... error rates and lo

34:01

and behold, there

34:03

was a positive statistically significant correlation,

34:05

but in the wrong direction. And

34:08

that really struck me shocking, right. And,

34:10

and at the time, of course, I'm

34:13

early in my in my academic very

34:15

early in my academic career. And I,

34:17

I just it was, you know, it's

34:20

a failure, make no mistake, I had

34:22

failed to support my hypothesis. I, you

34:25

know, I felt scared

34:27

and, you know, kind of despondent,

34:30

even, I was

34:33

scared to tell Hackman, you

34:35

know, my advisor, this failure.

34:37

And of course,

34:39

I came to my senses slowly, I started

34:42

to think like, Okay, wait a minute, you

34:44

know, first of all, I checked, you know,

34:46

like crazy, where did I get data? Yeah,

34:48

where did I get it? What did I

34:50

do wrong? That may and then like, did

34:52

I enter things wrong? Anyway, no, right. And

34:55

ultimately, no, I didn't make a mistake. Oh,

34:57

too bad. But then it

35:00

suddenly occurred to me almost a

35:02

blinding flash, the obvious that maybe

35:04

the better teams don't make more

35:06

mistakes. You know, maybe they're

35:08

more willing to report them. And

35:10

I went I told Richard Hackman

35:12

all of that, and he thought he thought that

35:15

was a reasonable possibility. There

35:17

were some secondary analyses I could

35:19

do that lent support to that

35:22

idea. But the principal investigators, the

35:24

physicians in charge of the overall

35:26

study really

35:28

hated that idea. In fact, they were

35:31

convinced it was dead wrong. Why? Yes,

35:33

because their part of the I mean,

35:35

their research goal had been to definitively

35:38

show error, the error rates, they were

35:40

going to publish, you know, a

35:42

study that says, you know, this is sort of the

35:45

proven rate of errors, and we have to do

35:47

something about them. And what I was saying was,

35:50

you know, if it was true, what I was saying was, we

35:53

don't have them all. And

35:55

we may systematically have

35:57

variants based on interpersonal climate.

36:00

That was my way

36:02

of talking about it at the time. That

36:05

is, you know, and to them,

36:07

that was so soft and subjective

36:10

and unlikely. And so I guess,

36:13

you know, their skepticism bordering

36:15

on negativity ended up

36:17

being a gift because I had to really work

36:19

harder, not only in

36:22

analyzing secondary analysis of that study, but

36:24

also in designing the next study on

36:26

purpose to sort of show, or to

36:28

test. Or to test because I wasn't

36:30

sure really, you know, to see whether

36:33

there were differences in interpersonal climate across

36:35

teams within the same organizations. And it's

36:37

though whether that had led

36:40

to differences in behavior and ultimately

36:42

performance. Yeah, but I think

36:44

just to finish on this story, I mean, one

36:46

point is super important, you highlight it, I think

36:48

this research and the work you've done is this

36:52

notion of transparency, right? Of ability

36:54

to open up on your failures

36:56

and mistakes and your rules. And

36:59

bring that to the team, to

37:01

the table, to different constituencies, say,

37:03

hey, this is what we've

37:05

done, this is the result, and what can

37:07

we do better? Yes.

37:10

Later, a few years later, I married,

37:13

you know, I met and

37:15

married my husband who's a scientist. And, you know,

37:18

so then I became far more, I mean,

37:20

by that time, I've been doing a lot of

37:23

thinking about these things. But in his line of

37:25

work and sort of in biology, he

37:28

estimated 70% of the

37:30

experiments they run fail. 30%

37:33

are pretty darn exciting and new.

37:35

So, but you know, so you're

37:37

not really a researcher if you're

37:39

not failing. And, you know, so

37:42

my initial response was unhelpful,

37:45

right? And not,

37:47

you know, not particularly

37:49

thoughtful and

37:51

painful. But once you

37:53

realize, no, I mean, it still doesn't make it

37:55

fun, but once you realize that failure is a

37:58

part of progress in it. any

38:00

new field and a part of success in any

38:02

field, then you can

38:05

feel better about it. Yeah. So maybe

38:07

just finishing on this notion, of

38:09

course, of filling. It would be interesting to go back

38:12

to the kind of the

38:14

parenting stories as well, I mean, you

38:16

relate to your parents, not necessarily your

38:18

own stories, Amy, but, you know, very

38:20

often I would say when you grow

38:22

up, right, parents tend, depending on the

38:25

parents you have, obviously, some,

38:27

I would say many, we tend to

38:29

encourage us to succeed. They would congratulate

38:31

us for a good grade, Amy, wonderful

38:34

job, and that sometimes

38:36

they would say failure, Amy, is not an

38:38

option, right? And

38:40

we hear that as well from coaches and parents,

38:43

bosses as well. So is

38:45

it a dangerous, actually, motto, if

38:48

it could be an option? And if yes,

38:50

what would be your advice to parents

38:52

on the call? Maybe? Absolutely.

38:56

So I think it is a day, it's a

38:58

dangerous, this is nuanced, right?

39:00

It's a dangerous slogan because unless it

39:02

is clarified, and I'll clarify it in

39:04

a moment, the

39:06

main message you hear, the main message

39:09

the kids hear, the students hear, the

39:11

employees hear is when

39:13

things go wrong, don't tell me about them. The

39:16

main, the main impact you will have

39:18

is that you will be kept in

39:20

the dark as a parent,

39:22

as a boss. So you

39:24

don't actually want that. You will have

39:27

had a better week if you're

39:29

not hearing what's really going on.

39:31

But ultimately, that's not about that's

39:33

not effective parenting or leadership. And

39:35

so the new the more nuanced, I mean,

39:37

because we do want to convey high standards,

39:40

right? And we do want to

39:42

succeed in high stakes environments.

39:44

So yes, so the nuanced

39:46

message is, I

39:48

believe, you know, with your skill and with

39:50

your hard work, it

39:52

is possible to achieve this objective,

39:56

that I believe that success is within

39:58

grasp. And It's

40:00

not going to be easy or straightforward. There

40:02

will be bumps in the road. So when

40:04

things when you encounter them Speak

40:08

up quickly. I mean it's going to

40:10

be about problem solving from here on

40:12

so parenting I think we've been on

40:14

the wrong, you know, we've been sort

40:17

of on the wrong slope over

40:19

Yes, certainly that my my lifetime where

40:22

kids are being raised with more and more

40:25

emphasis on success and you

40:27

know Protecting them there whether it's

40:29

the snowplow parent or the

40:31

helicopter parent protecting them from experiencing

40:34

any Disappointments every child gets

40:36

a trophy etc. And in many

40:38

ways, I think you know, one of the best Antidotes

40:41

to that is is organized

40:43

sports, but really organized sports where

40:46

at the end of the day There

40:48

was a team that won and a team that

40:50

lost and that's okay. That's okay. You

40:52

want to play? Sports

40:55

you will you know that you

40:58

won't win them. You cannot win them all

41:00

just it's the nature of the game. So

41:03

So I think that that helps kids build

41:05

failure muscles, but we should not everybody wants

41:07

to be an athlete So there should be other

41:09

ways to build failure muscles. You should

41:12

be encouraged to try

41:14

challenging projects and relish

41:17

the learning from The

41:20

the ways they fall short from the

41:22

original goal because if everything hits its goal You're

41:25

not stretching, you know, you're not setting

41:27

your goals high enough So

41:30

one one a real I think your work has

41:32

been also is very available.

41:34

Amy's the notion of fitting well

41:38

And you discuss it a little bit but

41:40

I think it'd be great maybe to maybe

41:42

to go back to one of your life stories

41:45

Again, I'm sorry When

41:48

when was it you actually you fair well,

41:50

but you wish that someone would have taught

41:52

you at the time What

41:54

does he mean to farewell? So in a way you didn't fair

41:56

well, but you wish that you had

41:58

that wisdom at the time time, right? To, to

42:01

fail well. Oh, dear. I know,

42:06

I should have thought of something. That's

42:08

okay. You

42:11

know, I mean, I almost, it's hard for

42:13

me to come up with something concrete.

42:16

I have had many

42:18

failures. But, you

42:22

know, like the one we just talked

42:24

about, but, but it's,

42:26

it's, it's

42:28

more, you know, I've beaten myself

42:30

up more than I should have, right? So

42:32

the, the lesson, and I have been privileged

42:34

to get this lesson. I

42:37

mean, I've had, you know,

42:39

good coaching and mentoring, but,

42:41

but I've, the mentoring I

42:44

needed that I didn't have maybe in a

42:46

timely enough way was anti perfectionism.

42:50

It's not that I've ever

42:52

really been a perfectionist, but

42:54

I have certainly beaten myself

42:56

up for my shortcomings. And

42:58

it's, it's, isn't a

43:00

healthy place to

43:03

know, right? I mean, no, no, I

43:05

think the ability to forgive yourself for

43:07

your shortcomings, which are real and will

43:10

not ever be fully, you know, to

43:12

try to improve, but also to be

43:15

okay, being, being what

43:17

another mentor and Maxi Maltz be called

43:19

a fallible human being. That's

43:22

what we're all fallible human beings. So

43:25

I'm sorry, that's not a very good

43:28

answer. Oh, it's okay. I mean, I

43:30

can actually actually share, you know, one

43:32

situation I had in my personal life

43:34

where I felt miserable,

43:36

but failing. So I didn't

43:38

fail well. I was at the time the head

43:40

of Microsoft International. So all of all, all of

43:42

all subsidiaries globally, as sort of the US of

43:44

Canada at the time. And I

43:47

was tasked to basically build

43:49

a go big China plan in China at

43:51

the time in the in the 2000 years,

43:54

right? So really more 20 more than 20

43:56

years ago, was like a huge

43:59

gross opportunity. community development. But guess

44:01

what? Chinese society are

44:03

not very respectful of intellectual property.

44:05

So when you're a software

44:07

company, it means that like 98% of

44:09

your products are righted and you don't

44:12

get any money, any payment for what

44:14

you do. And

44:16

of course, you can do and

44:18

we did a lot of work with policymakers and so

44:20

on, but who cares? At the time, who cares?

44:23

And so I build a very

44:25

big plan, very ambitious with many

44:28

of my colleagues from R&D to

44:30

go to markets and finance and

44:32

others with a very meticulous plan,

44:34

which took me like nine months to build.

44:37

And long story short, after a

44:39

year, I had to declare, well,

44:42

failure didn't work. So

44:45

I took kind of a, okay, regroup, reshape

44:47

the business in a different way. And I would

44:49

say at the time, it was

44:52

a very hard moment for me to take it on

44:54

saying, well, what did I miss? It

44:56

tells me the staying of the market, tells

44:59

the teaming, and tell the other people. Anyway,

45:01

so I wish I would have better understand

45:03

the concept of fitting well maybe. Yes, yes,

45:05

yes. But you know, you didn't get

45:07

fired, thankfully. No, it would have been stupid if you

45:10

had. Yeah, had a great boss, had a great boss.

45:12

It was new territory. I mean, there's no

45:14

question about that. And you

45:17

couldn't necessarily have seen it coming. So

45:21

that's just life. It's

45:23

life here, I think you learn. Another legendary

45:25

failure, of course, is the one from Steve

45:27

Jobs that we all know about Steve, of

45:29

course. Well, got led off of

45:31

his job at the time and eventually built

45:34

the amazing company that we know about today,

45:36

of course, after many years. So

45:38

very recently, I released an episode of

45:40

the podcast with someone I think you

45:43

know, Amy Derry-Clark. She's an educator at

45:45

Columbia Business School and Duke University. She

45:48

also works for a journal by sending

45:50

author. And she wrote a lot about

45:52

reinventing yourself. Yes. Okay.

45:54

And when she was led off of her job

45:57

as a reporter, which was the way she started

46:00

as a news reporter. She promised herself

46:02

that she would never let herself be

46:04

in the same situation again. She

46:06

set out to reinvent herself to define

46:08

what made her special and

46:10

what she had to offer to the world just

46:13

like you. She promoted what

46:15

is called a continuous learning, basically.

46:18

So I'd like to ask you the

46:20

question about what does it mean for

46:22

Amy to reinventing yourself? What is it

46:25

about, what does it take

46:27

to reinventing oneself? Yeah, well, I mean,

46:29

I think in some cases, it takes

46:32

it to me. It takes

46:34

a commitment to the greater good

46:36

because it's not about, right? I

46:38

get a little antsy when I

46:40

think about the sort of, you know, branding

46:43

yourself, right? Because it sounds

46:45

to me external. And

46:49

I think reinventing yourself is

46:51

internal. It's

46:53

getting in touch with the

46:56

part of yourself that wants

47:01

to make a difference, that wants to be

47:03

a part and deeply connected

47:05

to other people and

47:07

not isolated and alone and better than

47:10

or more important than, but

47:12

a part of, to be

47:14

integral to a community and

47:19

especially a larger community like

47:22

Spaceship Earth. And

47:24

so getting in touch with, so I think

47:26

that does, that requires a

47:28

kind of a recommitment to a larger

47:30

purpose or a connection with a larger

47:32

purpose. And it also requires more

47:35

self-awareness than we spontaneously

47:38

have. But

47:41

becoming genuinely self-aware,

47:45

more aware of the impact you may

47:47

be having, more curious about the impact

47:49

you're having and more deeply interested in

47:52

and curious about others. Because

47:55

if you're reinventing yourself as, you know,

47:57

more important than others, then that

47:59

won't... be a very good invention. Yeah,

48:02

you touched on something which to me

48:04

is super critical in terms of passive

48:06

leadership, which is self-awareness to start with.

48:10

What is your best recommendation

48:12

for anyone on the podcast listening to

48:14

you on how do you become

48:16

more self-aware? Well,

48:18

I think it goes hand in hand with

48:21

becoming more curious because I think

48:23

to be self-aware, your best data

48:25

come from other people. You

48:27

know, that feedback loop, right? You have to ask.

48:32

You can easily imagine you know the impact you're

48:35

having. You don't. I mean, just by definition, it's

48:38

a blind spot. And so

48:40

you have to be willing to

48:42

be interested in their experience and

48:44

ask and

48:47

learn from them. And

48:51

that's part of it. And I think

48:53

the other part is to pause, to

48:55

learn, to master the pause,

48:57

to learn to take a deep breath

48:59

and think, okay, what am I really

49:01

thinking? To just slow it down. And

49:03

I don't mean to slow

49:05

life down, but just to slow because

49:07

our thinking is very fast and very

49:09

automatic. You know, Kahneman talked about thinking

49:12

fast and thinking slow. And

49:14

our fast thinking is generally wrong

49:16

in a variety of ways, including

49:19

in our self-judgments. But to

49:21

pause and say, okay, what's really going on? And

49:25

then to consciously choose a

49:29

path forward that is fundamentally a

49:31

learning path. Learning path,

49:33

yeah. No, I mean,

49:35

there's so much truth into that learning

49:37

path and that curiosity. Now, I'd like

49:40

us to go from this personal point

49:42

of view of oneself to the

49:45

organizational point of view, which you spent

49:47

a lot of time on, I think,

49:49

Ebony. I'd like to make a

49:51

link, which I always love to do, is

49:53

one of my latest guests, which you know

49:55

well, Mary Murphy, Dr. Mary Murphy, who,

49:58

as you know, is a prominent social psychologist. and

50:00

whose work focuses on the psychological

50:03

factors that influence educational and

50:05

organization environments. So I received Mary

50:07

very recently in my podcast a

50:09

few weeks ago. And of course,

50:11

we discussed a lot of book

50:13

and her work on the culture

50:15

of growth, which emphasized

50:17

creating the environments to support learning,

50:19

development, and resilience. So

50:22

what is your point of

50:24

view again on the way

50:26

work organization entities should

50:29

organize themselves to encourage, to

50:31

enable, to stimulate that continuous

50:33

learning and curiosity at scale?

50:36

What does it take? Well,

50:40

at a detailed level, there'll be lots of different

50:42

answers to that question. But

50:44

at a reasonably generalizable level,

50:48

the answer lies in first and foremost,

50:51

a massive shared

50:53

commitment to a goal,

50:56

to a purpose, right? To serve

50:59

and whatever, answering the question, when we have

51:01

a clear answer to the question of why does it

51:03

matter that this organization exists, right? We

51:05

could just close out. The why.

51:07

The why. The why. Whom

51:09

we serve, whom we serve and how we serve

51:12

them, right? Whether that's toothpaste or

51:15

social services, whatever. And

51:17

why it matters. And

51:22

then we sort of back

51:24

off from there with, well,

51:27

how can we best organize ourselves? And

51:29

this is a collective collaborative

51:32

problem to

51:34

deliver seamlessly on that

51:37

purpose. And that's where, if

51:41

you're running aviation versus, you

51:43

know, scientifically, you want differences.

51:46

It does come down to really, how

51:48

do we create learning teams, you

51:51

know, teams that learn around

51:54

the particular tasks that they

51:57

are assigned to do? And

52:00

then of course, it's

52:02

not just a bunch of

52:04

little isolated modules. There are interconnections

52:07

among them that are super

52:09

important to think

52:12

about, articulate. We have to,

52:14

you know, management is ensuring

52:16

coordinated execution in pursuit of

52:18

performance. And coordinated execution,

52:21

two easy words, but not

52:24

easy in practice, right? So you better

52:26

think very deeply about the how,

52:29

but it will involve at very essence,

52:31

very core, it will involve groups

52:35

of people engaged in continuous

52:37

learning that will require honesty,

52:39

that will require experimentation, problem

52:41

solving, and so forth. And

52:45

then finally, I mean, building in

52:47

the sort of measures

52:49

that help you know how you're

52:51

doing in an honest way. Yes.

52:54

No, I love the starting point you started

52:56

with actually, because I believe in it so

52:59

much, the purpose, the meaning,

53:01

the why we are here in an organization,

53:03

a team to do something together as

53:06

a condition to start learning together

53:10

on achieving the why and actually

53:12

the how we get to do

53:14

that together. Now, I'd like to

53:17

talk about another step of

53:19

development of any organization, which

53:21

is also personal and collective

53:23

resiliency. And

53:26

it's a big topic itself.

53:29

In another podcast episode, I had the

53:31

pleasure of hosting Reshma Sojani. Don't

53:33

if you know Reshma, she's a wonderful

53:35

change maker and advocate for gender equality.

53:38

And, you know, at one point in

53:40

her life, she was

53:43

actually an attorney, but she decided

53:45

to run for the US Congress. I

53:47

know this is a political. This

53:49

is a time for politics in the US, but

53:51

I'm not going to make any comments on the

53:54

election at this stage anyway. So this was a

53:56

groundbreaking move because as a

53:58

actually. As the

54:01

time no South Asian woman had

54:03

ever run for office before, she

54:05

was 33 years old. She

54:08

was much younger than any average

54:10

candidate in the Congress because the average was

54:12

69, right?

54:14

And although she didn't win the election, the

54:16

experience was so transformative for her.

54:19

It led her to embrace a powerful

54:21

new mantra that she talked about, which

54:24

is, be brave, not perfect. So,

54:28

you love perfectionism. I love it. I

54:30

love be brave, not perfect. That's wonderful.

54:33

It's a wonderful mantra. And so it's one

54:35

of the stories I love to learn from. But

54:39

I also love to cut a

54:41

sentence from you, Amy, which is

54:43

about organization resilience. You said resilience

54:45

is not just about bouncing back,

54:48

it's about bouncing forward, just

54:50

like Reshima actually did it. So how

54:53

do you define it? How do you

54:55

define it, assess an organization resilience? And

54:58

can you show us a few concrete examples

55:00

about how a company should

55:02

rethink themselves to

55:04

be able to adapt to ever

55:07

changing world actually, right? And so that

55:09

resiliency has to be built into the

55:11

fabrics of the business. Well,

55:13

I think it starts with recognizing

55:15

it's, again, not natural, not easy.

55:19

Resilience isn't the default. And if

55:21

you don't have it, you're broken. Resilience

55:24

is something you consciously

55:27

build. And I think

55:29

it starts with calling attention to the

55:32

challenge of it, right? Because it

55:34

will be, it's always disappointing and

55:37

can be, you know, the disappointing

55:39

can bleed into crippling if you don't

55:41

watch out. So always

55:44

that frame, that learning frame, which

55:46

is where do we

55:48

go from here? How do we

55:50

take the data of our recent

55:53

past experience and use

55:55

it, put it to good use going forward?

55:57

That has to become a habit of mind.

56:00

or if not a habit of mind, at least a kind

56:03

of formalized process. We

56:05

build in tools and

56:07

supports to help people do that. Because

56:10

in our volatile, uncertain, complex

56:12

world, setbacks

56:15

are going to be a given, not a

56:18

surprise. And so

56:20

how we respond to setbacks becomes

56:23

the differentiator between the

56:26

organizations that are excellent

56:29

and continue to stay alive

56:31

and thrive and those that

56:34

don't. There's a wonderful story

56:36

about Pixar,

56:39

which is definitely one of the organizations

56:41

I will highlight as

56:45

effective, as a learning organization, as an

56:48

organization that's put in place structures

56:50

and processes to build candor and

56:52

psychological safety. They

56:54

had, obviously, an

56:58

enormously successful movie, Toy Story, then

57:01

subsequent enormously successful movies.

57:04

And then it got to the time

57:06

of doing Toy Story 2, which

57:09

ultimately, as probably everybody knows, was

57:11

also a big success. But there

57:14

was a moment

57:16

in that project where someone made basic

57:19

failure. Someone made a mistake, and

57:21

they lost everything. They lost

57:24

all of the files that contained.

57:27

Huge deal. Yeah. It's a huge deal, right?

57:29

So I mean, normal company, everybody's going to

57:32

be fired on, not everybody, but everybody touching

57:34

this failure is going to be fired on

57:36

the spot. But

57:38

they ended up

57:40

being able to piece back together

57:42

a lot of the data and sort

57:44

of take it, again, face forward, and

57:48

build in some additional structures

57:52

to ensure that never could happen

57:54

again. That's

57:57

obviously a devastating loss

57:59

of. value. But

58:02

there was no moment where anyone

58:04

was punished. There was only,

58:07

what do we learn, what

58:09

do we do? And now, I

58:11

want to be clear about this because this was

58:13

not the result of a person

58:16

being either sloppy

58:19

or stupid. It was a tiny bit

58:21

careless and a tiny bit bad look. But how

58:25

you react when things go

58:28

wrong is mission

58:30

critical because it's got to

58:32

be forward

58:35

facing, learning oriented. It's

58:38

a great story back in the

58:40

day about IBM's Tom Watson, where

58:42

some sort

58:46

of high potential middle manager

58:50

is associated with a very large, financially

58:52

large failure.

58:55

And he's called into the chairman's office. He

58:57

assumes to be fired. Of course, that's

59:00

not what happens. What happens is Watson

59:02

says, when the

59:04

man sort of nervously says, can

59:06

we get this over with, fire you, why

59:09

would I fire you? I just spent $50,000 educating you. That

59:14

contains a belief that, and I think it's true,

59:16

that it's tuition, not

59:19

waste. You are now probably

59:24

the safest manager in this whole

59:27

company because of that experience you've

59:29

just had. But

59:31

of course, you must learn from it. Yes.

59:35

We're almost coming to an end, but I need to ask

59:37

you a couple more questions before we close, Hamy. The

59:40

first one is really about

59:44

I would say your own practices of

59:47

positive psychology. As you know, I've been hosting

59:49

a lot of colleagues

59:52

that you know, like

59:54

Kim Cameron, like Martin

59:56

Seligman, Barbara Farrickson, and

59:59

many and many of their peers have

1:00:01

been developing a lot of tools as well to,

1:00:04

what do we say, to really manage our

1:00:06

reservoir of positivity, right? A reservoir

1:00:09

in ourselves. Can

1:00:11

you tell us what is the best way

1:00:13

for you to advise our

1:00:15

listeners to take care,

1:00:17

to nurture their positivity

1:00:20

garden, right, in themselves so that

1:00:22

they can flourish and

1:00:24

then eventually be actually

1:00:27

broadcasted to others and to the world?

1:00:30

So I'll share the model that I learned,

1:00:32

well, from Larry Wilson, who

1:00:35

really learned it from or

1:00:37

simplified what

1:00:39

he had learned from Maxi Maltz-Bean. Now

1:00:42

Maxi was an African-American psychiatrist

1:00:45

who was born

1:00:47

in about 1929 and spent some time

1:00:50

in the Korean War and working with prisoners

1:00:53

of war. And he got very interested, he

1:00:55

had been a physician, but then he got

1:00:57

very interested in psychological challenges. And

1:01:01

he began to see that we could take

1:01:03

control of our thoughts to have

1:01:05

more positive, uplifting

1:01:08

experiences. And

1:01:11

he developed what he called the six habits

1:01:13

of healthy thinking. And Larry looked

1:01:15

at them and essentially said, there's

1:01:17

three, stop, challenge, choose.

1:01:20

Stop, challenge, choose. And they're memorable.

1:01:22

I mean, it's easier. It's like

1:01:24

six or three, stop and stop

1:01:26

is pause.

1:01:30

Just interrupt the emotionality, especially

1:01:32

the negative emotions. Say when

1:01:34

something goes wrong, disappointed, don't

1:01:36

like what someone said, just

1:01:40

pause. A second will

1:01:42

do. Just that pause, stop. And

1:01:45

then challenges, take a clear eyed

1:01:47

look at your thinking, which

1:01:49

we always assume is right. And

1:01:52

you will realize that some of it is absurd.

1:02:00

You know, because some of it looks like this, I'm

1:02:02

going to be late for the meeting. I'm going to

1:02:04

die. No, you're not. It's

1:02:06

it's you're just it's inconvenient.

1:02:08

Right? So sort of and and and and um, So

1:02:11

you're challenging your thinking to get it to be

1:02:14

what maxi would call more rational. I

1:02:16

might call it more accurate and

1:02:18

then choose again forward

1:02:20

facing choose a healthier

1:02:23

self-talk And a

1:02:25

healthier path forward something that is more likely to

1:02:28

get you where you would like to go where

1:02:30

you're trying to go. Yes Very

1:02:33

interesting, you know, I don't want to reopen

1:02:35

all my episode. But again, I

1:02:37

cannot resist talking about this episode

1:02:39

with the neuroscientist dr

1:02:42

caroline leith actually Who

1:02:44

is who has developed a method

1:02:46

methodology on five? Neurocycle

1:02:48

steps for mind or brain

1:02:51

to do exactly what you did by the in five steps

1:02:54

and actually she developed

1:02:56

the model because To

1:02:58

make it sticky for neural paths. It takes

1:03:00

67 days. She researched

1:03:02

for years. So anyway, it's

1:03:05

interesting to see some analogy

1:03:07

in the thinking but more details depending

1:03:09

on the angle you take as neuroscientists

1:03:11

versus psychologists But i'm with you. I

1:03:13

think there's just this moment of Posing

1:03:17

stepping back on the outside looking at yourself

1:03:19

on the outside and say, okay JP. Amy.

1:03:22

Oh Let's

1:03:24

just stop a minute on what you

1:03:26

just think or said and yes reflect

1:03:28

before you jump into Some

1:03:30

more words which might not be the right ones actually We

1:03:33

we jump too fast, right? Our

1:03:36

brains are beautiful things, but they lead

1:03:38

us astray with their speed Of

1:03:41

processing and we need to learn to you

1:03:44

know, slow it down and be more thoughtful

1:03:46

not about everything, you know But

1:03:48

about the things that really matter And

1:03:51

I mean I have found it's funny

1:03:53

because one of the things I wanted to do

1:03:55

in chapter five of right kind of wrong Was

1:03:58

but it didn't really look the editor sort of pushed

1:04:01

back was showed like you described this

1:04:03

other scientist our line was

1:04:05

to show how all of the people I have

1:04:07

learned from Larry, Maxi,

1:04:10

Chris Argeris, they're all actually

1:04:12

saying they didn't study with each other,

1:04:14

all of them. They are all saying,

1:04:16

you know, Danny Kahneman, they're all saying

1:04:18

the same thing. And that's because it's

1:04:21

true. If you are

1:04:23

thoughtful, and you tap into fundamental

1:04:26

aspects of the way our minds work, you

1:04:28

will come to a similar recommendation.

1:04:32

I fully agree with you. So I'm really coming to

1:04:34

an end, my very last question

1:04:36

to the last, sorry. What

1:04:39

is this question I like to ask from time

1:04:41

to time to my guess? What is

1:04:44

your own definition of a positive leader,

1:04:46

Amy? A

1:04:48

positive leader is one who makes

1:04:50

a difference by harnessing the efforts

1:04:53

of others. And

1:04:55

others are follow willingly because they

1:04:57

want to not because they have

1:04:59

to. Love it.

1:05:02

Very, very precise, very

1:05:04

articulate. And

1:05:08

now just to finish, really, what

1:05:11

would be your condition to listeners

1:05:13

to basically augment

1:05:16

their life to make their

1:05:18

life more meaningful moving forward?

1:05:24

Reignite your essential

1:05:26

caring about others. I mean, I

1:05:28

do think that's where joy comes

1:05:30

from. I think our lives work better

1:05:32

and are better when we're fundamentally focused

1:05:35

on others and what we can do,

1:05:38

rather than on ourselves and what we want. Wonderful

1:05:42

conclusion, Amy. It has been a delight to

1:05:44

have you on the Pastilla Leadership podcast. I

1:05:47

love it. And thank you so

1:05:49

much for all the time you dedicate to this episode.

1:05:51

Truly, thank you for having me. The

1:05:54

right kind of failure is the kind that

1:05:56

teaches us something valuable. It allows

1:05:58

us to improve and prepares

1:06:01

us to our greater success. Ebi

1:06:04

Edmondson is definitely a very inspiring

1:06:06

professor. I'm so glad I had

1:06:08

the chance to share this refreshing discussion with her.

1:06:11

I hope you enjoyed this episode too,

1:06:13

by the way. And don't forget to

1:06:15

subscribe to the Positive Leadership podcast to

1:06:17

hear more inspiring testimonies. Talk

1:06:19

to you soon.