As a new year is about to begin, many companies are reviewing what worked, what didn’t, and what needs to change. It’s a time for reflection, and for most leaders, that includes confronting failure.
But not all failures are bad. Some signal that your organization is learning fast.
That was one of my key takeaways from Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson, who spoke about “Leading Through the Unpredictable” at the World Business (WOBI) Forum in Sydney.
Edmondson, best known for her pioneering work on psychological safety, or the belief that people can take interpersonal risks at work without fear, consistently ranks among the world’s top management thinkers. Her message is simple but powerful: failure is inevitable, but it doesn’t have to be wasteful.
Why We Stay Silent
In unpredictable times, businesses face more complexity, ambiguity, and speed. That means more experiments, more adjustments, and inevitably, more failures.
Yet failure only fuels learning when people feel safe enough to talk about it. Unfortunately, many employees don’t.
Edmondson’s research shows that people often stay silent out of fear of looking ignorant, incompetent, intrusive, or negative. So they avoid asking questions, admitting mistakes, offering ideas, or challenging the status quo.
The result? Valuable insights never surface. Teams look harmonious, but learning stalls.
We all like it when others agree with us, it makes us feel smart. But real learning happens when people respectfully disagree, ask for help, and raise problems early.
Failure Is Not the Same as Mistake
Edmondson draws an important distinction:
- A mistake is an unintended deviation from known standards, something preventable.
- A failure is an undesired outcome from trying something new, where results can’t be guaranteed.
Mistakes are about execution. Failures are about exploration.
Leaders shouldn’t aim to eliminate all failure, that’s impossible. Instead, they must learn to distinguish between types of failure and manage them intelligently.
The Three Types of Failure
- Basic Failures – Preventable errors from a single cause, such as carelessness, miscommunication, or weak processes. Example: Citibank once mistakenly wired US$900 million to a group of lenders.Â
- Complex Failures – Arise when multiple factors interact unpredictably, such as unclear roles, faulty technology, or sudden external shocks.
- Intelligent Failures – The good kind. These occur when people take thoughtful risks in new territory to test an idea or approach. Example: Pharmaceutical firms expect most new drugs to fail in clinical trials, yet every failure yields insights that lead to the next breakthrough.
The Five Attributes of Intelligent Failure
For a failure to be “intelligent,” it must:
- Take place in new territory.
- Pursue a clear, purposeful goal.
- Be grounded in prior knowledge and preparation.
- Be small enough to limit downside risk.
- Generate lessons that are shared and applied.
These qualities turn potential losses into strategic investments in learning.
What Leaders Must Do
Every organization faces all three kinds of failure. The leader’s role is to:
- Prevent basic failures through training, clear processes, and accountability.
- Anticipate and mitigate complex failures through coordination and systems thinking.
- Encourage intelligent failures by rewarding curiosity and disciplined experimentation.
Context matters.
In high-stakes, familiar settings such as aviation, finance, healthcare, precision is non-negotiable, and the goal is zero preventable errors.
But in new or uncertain territory, like entering a new market, testing a bold campaign, or launching an innovation, some intelligent failure is not only acceptable, it’s essential.
The real skill lies in knowing when you’re in a “don’t-mess-this-up” zone versus a “let’s-see-what-we-discover” zone.
Edmondson advises leaders to balance this through three steps:
- Set the stage — clarify purpose, goals, and uncertainty.
- Invite participation — encourage questions, ideas, and concerns early.
- Respond productively — focus on learning, not blame.
All of this rests on psychological safety. Without it, people hide mistakes, avoid risks, and deprive the organization of the truth it needs to adapt.
Misunderstanding Psychological Safety
Psychological safety is often misunderstood. Edmondson clarifies what it is not:
- It’s not about being nice all the time.
- It’s not about agreement or consensus.
- It doesn’t mean every idea will be accepted.
- It’s not permission to complain or slack off.
Instead, it means people feel safe to speak up in service of the team’s goals, even when what they have to say is uncomfortable.
High-Quality Conversations
The best indicator of a healthy organization isn’t silence, it’s the quality of its conversations. High-quality conversations are marked by:
- Genuine engagement,
- A balance between advocating one’s views and asking about others’, and
- A shared sense of progress and learning.
Edmondson poses a diagnostic question for leaders: “What percentage of what you hear in your organization are dissent, problems, requests for help, or reports of failure?” If that number is low, it may not mean things are fine, it may mean people are too afraid to speak up.
What This Means for Marketers and Business Leaders
In marketing, where creativity and innovation drive growth, psychological safety isn’t optional, it’s a prerequisite.
If marketers fear being wrong, they’ll cling to safe, familiar ideas. Yet great campaigns, bold products, and breakthrough strategies often begin as intelligent failures, experiments that didn’t fully succeed but revealed powerful insights.
Think of how many brand innovations or digital initiatives began with tests that failed before they succeeded. What mattered was whether the organization treated those moments as learning opportunities or as reasons for blame.
Teams that test, learn, and iterate quickly, without fear, innovate faster and recover stronger.
My Reflection
Listening to Amy Edmondson reminded me that leadership today is less about controlling results and more about enabling learning.
In a world of constant change, the most successful organizations aren’t those that avoid failure, but those that fail intelligently and learn systematically.
We can’t predict every disruption, but we can prepare our people to respond, by making it safe to ask questions, surface bad news early, and extract lessons from what goes wrong.
Intelligent failure isn’t the opposite of success. It’s the pathway to it.
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Josiah Go is Chairman and Chief Innovation Strategist of Mansmith and Fielders Inc.
The next World Business Forum Sydney will be held on Nov. 5–6, 2026.
