How Did Adam Grant Redefine Failure in the Workplace?
How Did Adam Grant Redefine Failure in the Workplace?
When Adam Grant talks about failure, he doesn’t just mean the sting of a rejected proposal or a botched presentation—he means rethinking failure’s entire role in how we work. In his research, Grant argues that modern workplaces suffer from “failure avoidance,” where employees hide mistakes to protect their reputations. He’s found that teams thrive when leaders model vulnerability. For instance, in a 2017 Harvard Business Review article, he shared how a CEO began sharing her own errors during meetings, which led to a 34% increase in team risk-taking. Grant’s point? Failure isn’t the enemy of success; silence about failure is.
What Happened When Adam Grant’s Research Hit a Dead End?
Even Grant’s own work has faced setbacks. In his book Originals, he discusses the struggle to get his dissertation on “giving versus taking” in professional environments published. The initial studies were rejected because they contradicted the popular belief that self-interest drives success. Instead of abandoning the research, Grant refined his approach, collecting data from diverse industries to strengthen his argument. The result? His model of “givers” and “takers” became a cornerstone of modern organizational psychology. This persistence mirrors his advice: “Failure is an event, not a person. The key is to treat it as feedback, not a verdict.”
How Does Adam Grant Use Failure to Boost Creativity?
Grant believes creativity is born from “killed ideas.” In a Stanford lecture, he described how the team behind the first Apple stores nearly abandoned their vision after a disastrous prototype. Instead of scrapping the project, they dissected what failed—a lack of customer interaction—and redesigned the space around open experimentation. This aligns with Grant’s concept of “failure mining,” where teams are encouraged to share dead-end ideas to spark better ones. He cites Pixar’s practice of screening “ugly” early film drafts as a case study. The lesson? Letting ideas “die” publicly accelerates innovation.
What’s Adam Grant’s Take on “Smart” vs. “Silly” Failure?
Not all failures are equal in Grant’s view. He distinguishes between “smart” failures—which test novel ideas with low stakes—and “silly” ones that repeat known risks. In a 2021 interview, he criticized companies that reward reckless gambles (like a failed billion-dollar acquisition) while overlooking employees afraid to propose small experiments. Grant points to the rise of 3M’s Post-it Notes as a “smart” failure: a weak adhesive initially deemed a dud was repurposed into a revolutionary product. The takeaway? Fail cheaply, learn expansively.
How Did Adam Grant Help NASA Embrace Productive Failure?
Perhaps Grant’s most dramatic example of failure management comes from his collaboration with NASA. After the Columbia disaster in 2003, he worked with engineers to rebuild a culture where dissent was encouraged. By implementing anonymous feedback channels and “pre-mortem” analysis (where teams imagine a project failed and work backward), NASA reduced critical oversight errors. Grant’s approach here underscores his belief that failure should be “premeditated, not accidental.” It’s not about avoiding mistakes—it’s about designing systems that catch them early.
What Should You Do After a Professional Failure, According to Adam Grant?
Grant’s advice is counterintuitive: Don’t rush to move on. Instead, he advocates for a “failure audit,” where you analyze the root cause with a trusted colleague. In his own life, after a failed consulting project early in his career, Grant spent weeks dissecting why he’d underestimated client expectations. This process turned a personal setback into a repeatable framework for future clients. As he writes, “The best way to recover isn’t to distract yourself—it’s to deepen your understanding.”
Adam Grant’s relationship with failure isn’t theoretical—he’s tested these ideas in Fortune 500 companies, NASA, and even his own career. If you’re curious how he’d help you reframe your next misstep, ask him directly on HoloDream. His insights might just turn your failure into your most unexpected breakthrough.