Carole Hemmelgarn

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95 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard May 2025 last heard May 2025

Carole Hemmelgarn’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Freakonomics Radio · How to Succeed at Failing, Part 2: Life and Death (Update) · 14 May 2025 podcast

Yes, I agree.

Based on what she was learning from medical mistakes, Edmondson wanted to come up with a more general theory of failure, or if not a theory, at least a way to think about it more systematically, to remove some of the blame, to make the responses to failure less uniform. Over time, she produced what she calls, well, here, let's have Edmondson say it.

After the break, we will hear about that spectrum of causes of failures. It can clarify some things, but not everything. Uncertainty is everywhere. I'm Stephen Dubner, and you are listening to Freakonomics Radio. We will be right back with how to succeed at failing. How did Amy Edmondson become so driven to study failure? Well, here's one path to it.

Her whole life, she had been a straight-A student.

In the years since then, Edmondson has been refining what she calls a spectrum of causes of failure. The spectrum ranges from blameworthy to praiseworthy, and it contains six distinct categories of failure.

Okay. So let's start at the blameworthy end of the spectrum and move our way along. Number one of the six.

You described this as the individual chooses to violate a prescribed process or practice. Now, I could imagine there are some cases where people violate because they think that the process is wrong.

After sabotage on the spectrum comes inattention.

Now, it sounds like those are mostly blameworthy, but what about inattention caused by external factors?

Can you think of a large-scale failure, a corporate or institutional failure that was caused largely by inattention?

And was that change done to save money or was it even more benign than that?

Wow, wow, wow, wow. That's a great example. Okay, let's go to the next one. Inability. I'm reading one version of your spectrum here, which describes this as the individual lacks the knowledge, attitude, skills, or perceptions required to execute a task. That's quite a portfolio of potential failure.

This reminds me of the Peter Principle where people get promoted to a position higher than they're capable based on their past experience, but their past experience may not have been so relevant to this.

I sometimes think about this in the political realm, too. The ability to get elected and the ability to govern effectively seem to be almost uncorrelated to me. I'm sorry to say. Do you think that's the case and do you apply this spectrum sometimes to the political realm? I don't think it was always the case.

After inability comes what Edmondson calls task challenge.

Kind of paradoxical then that the thing was actually called Challenger.

But, you know, if I recall correctly, even though he was on that commission to investigate, they tried to essentially shut him up. They didn't want that news coming out at the hearing. They wanted you know, they didn't want the failure to be so explicit.

By the way, if you don't remember the story of Richard Feynman and the Challenger investigation and the O-rings, don't worry. Last year, we made a three-part series about Feynman. The story of his role in the Challenger investigation is covered in part one of that series called The Curious Mr. Feynman. Okay, back to failure. The fifth cause of failure on Amy Edmondson's spectrum is uncertainty.

The final cause of failure, we have by now moved all the way from the blameworthy end of the spectrum to the praiseworthy. is simply called experimentation.

So that is Amy Edmondson's entire spectrum of the causes of failure. Sabotage, inattention, inability, task challenge, uncertainty, and experimentation. If you're like me, as you hear each of the categories, you automatically try to match them up with specific failures of your own.

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