Persistently Curious and Consumed by Thoughts of Failure
Ranked first on the Thinkers50 list of most influential management thinkers, Amy Edmonson published a tome this past year (2023), Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well, which is a helpful lens through which to look and consider the intersection of psychology and reality, when it comes to failure. Martin Reeves interviewed her recently for Rotman Management (Winter 2024), framing his questions on concepts from her book. My pencil notations and underlinings got me thinking about Edmonson’s distinction of types of failure, as well as other elements of psychology and awareness that are worth contemplation by the independent and international school sector.
On Emergence
When it comes to the business of transformation, educational institutions largely continue to adhere to the method of analyse, conceptualise, and execute. In other words, analyse ‘how we do school,’ conceptualise some new outcome for one or two parts of that model, then execute by imposing that new concept on the organisation. Everything lives within the locus of control of the organisation itself, which is why the method endures — it provides familiar comfort.