Will I love Right Kind of Wrong?

I love this book because it fundamentally changed how I think about leadership when the path forward isn’t clear.

Too often, I saw leaders confuse confidence with competence and mistake the absence of visible failure for success. This book helped me see why that instinct is so damaging in moments that actually require learning. What stayed with me is how clearly it distinguishes between smart risk-taking and avoidable mistakes, and how much leadership depends on creating the conditions for people to speak up, test ideas, and learn quickly.

I find myself coming back to this book whenever leaders face high-stakes… show more.

I haven’t always had a terribly healthy relationship with failure.

I was a perfectionist, who wanted to avoid being wrong, especially being publicly wrong, at any cost. My own journey to getting comfortable with failure took a long time and some pretty hard work, through building a practice of design thinking. If only I’d had Amy’s book to help me along the way!

Amy’s work is always thoughtful and inspiring, and this book builds on her essential thinking on psychological safety. Here, she lays out a helpful model for understanding good and bad failure, with a focus on reflection and… show more.

This book changed our relationship with failure. We stopped seeing failure as something to avoid at all costs, an idea that was wired into us at a young age.

In our work with organizations, we’ve also observed that a willingness to experiment and “fail wisely,” in the author’s words, is part of the foundation for effective leadership. This book shows you how to take smart risks while preventing avoidable harms.