Amy C. Edmondson

The hyper-competitive business landscape has leaders trapped in a dilemma: embrace risks and the inherent possibility of failure, or avoid them and stagnate? Harvard Business School Professor and bestselling author Amy Edmondson says while most missteps can be avoided, intelligent failures are gold mines of learning and innovation. As she explains in her new book, “Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well” (September 2023), leaders can transform their perspective on setbacks by embracing the intelligent failures that are vital to innovation. She likewise uncovers how basic and complex failures can reveal and prevent future recurrences. With Edmondson’s approach, leaders and teams gain specifically tailored practices, skills and mindsets for taking smart risks and using their inevitable mistakes as springboards for profound learning and competitive differentiation.

When looking to improve operations, organizational leaders have a powerful tool at their disposal, more valuable than focus groups and surveys combined: their employees. Leaders just need to nurture an environment where employees feel safe and empowered to share their thoughts, point out problems and, ultimately, be more innovative. For over 20 years, Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson has been studying how workplace behaviors affect performance. Her research confirms that organizations that create paths for speaking up are more effective in dealing with challenges of every kind, and markedly improve performance across the board, including the bottom line. Edmondson calls this an environment of psychological safety, and when working with firms to identify barriers to success that are often hidden inside a workplace culture, she employs the well-researched methodologies outlined in her bestselling 2018 book, “The Fearless Organization.” Through keynotes, workshops and confidential advisory meetings, Edmondson teaches organizations how to continuously improve performance by fostering a culture of psychological safety in which problems can be identified and addressed in an atmosphere of learning, cooperation and teamwork.

Teaming is the process of communicating and coordinating with people who differ in expertise, geography, or hierarchy. In this session, Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson teaches participants how to help people in their organization overcome barriers to teaming, including interpersonal fear, irrational beliefs about failure, and information hoarding. Audiences will learn an approach to leadership that fosters psychological safety and better, more productive collaboration, especially when bringing people together from different backgrounds to solve new and complex problems.

In today’s fast-moving, 24/7 business world, people are increasingly working with off-site team members, many of whom are located across towns, countries and time zones, and often tackling projects on the fly. Some may even speak other languages, use unfamiliar terms and have completely different value systems. In the context of her work with major firms, Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson views teaming as a verb, an activity that happens when disparate stakeholders come together to create, innovate, solve problems and make decisions, usually around complex projects with many moving parts and high-pressure deadlines. During her 20-plus years studying workplace behaviors, Edmondson has developed and implemented successful teaming methodologies built around such factors as open-mindedness, humility, curiosity and willingness to listen, learn quickly and take risks. Through workshops, keynotes and advisory meetings, she teaches leaders and team members at organizations how to use these tools to “team” more effectively, efficiently, creatively and cooperatively in order to improve individual and organizational performance.

In 2016, Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson co-authored a now prescient book called “Building the Future: Big Teaming for Audacious Innovation.” The themes she covers are even more relevant today as organizations often must use cross-sector collaboration to reframe operations in response to a rapidly changing world. In this talk, Edmondson discusses the value of successful teaming in a crisis and shares methods and exercises she’s developed during her more than 20 years of research into workplace behaviors and learning to help bridge the “culture clash” that frequently thwarts collaboration among diverse experts. Edmondson sees leadership as extremely critical during a crisis, pointing out that successful changes do not and will not happen spontaneously. During her keynotes, workshops and advisory meetings, she shares concrete tools leaders and their teams can use to innovate when faced with disruption so they can envision and create a more robust future.