Not all failures are created equally, says Harvard expert—how to learn from your mistakes more easily

"Fail fast, fail often" is a business mantra heralded by Silicon Valley. But Harvard Business School professor of leadership Amy C. Edmondson does not agree with it. Instead, she says, you should focus on failing intelligently.

Intelligent failures are usually the result of "efforts to learn or try something new that one can't possibly do perfectly the first time," Edmondson tells CNBC Make It. 

Your aim when trying to succeed should be to make sure that your failures are all intelligent failures, and to make sure that you are actually learning from these mistakes, Edmondson says. Because despite our desire to get better, people tend to be reluctant to talk about failure and quite eager to hide it.

Edmondson lays out the top three steps you need to take to make sure you are not just failing fast and often, but that you are also failing intelligently and learning from it, leading yourself to success.

Pick your battles wisely

Before you start failing your way to success, Edmondson says there are three key steps for picking intelligent failures.

1. Make sure that your actions are explicitly in pursuit of a goal, like developing a new product, a new service or making an improvement on your life. To do so, you need to make sure that you recognize a concrete opportunity to move forward and know exactly what you are working toward rather than taking a shot at the dark. 
2. Do your homework on previous attempts. Are you just repeating the same mistakes that someone else has just tried and failed at? Your attempts should be novel and well-informed, Edmondson says. 
3. Make sure that you are not overspending your resources. "An intelligent failure is one that's not gigantic, it's only as big as it has to be," Edmondson says. At the end of the day, it is all about minimizing risks, she says. Figure out how your trial can be as cheap and as safe as you can make it.

"If you are trying a new recipe, you try it at home and not when you're having guests over for dinner," she says. "When we know the risks are lower, that we can do this behind closed doors, without spending a lot of money and that no one will get hurt then we should be much more playful and much more willing to experiment."

Don't ask why or who, ask what

Once you have failed intelligently, you have to make sure that your analysis of the failure is correct to ensure you learn from it.

We don't like to confront our mistakes and do a systematic review because we tend to want to move on quickly from failure, Edmondson explains. We either like to blame forces out of our control or gloss over the mistakes. Even if you think you don't do this, Edmondson still says that her "best advice is to assume that you've got that mindset because we all do to a certain degree."

To motivate yourself to shift to a mindset of learning, you have to deliberately remind yourself that your failure is an investment in the future. "You've put money and time into this, let's get your money's worth," she says. 

Then you have to work to shift your blame-searching instincts. "We instinctively frame the process of learning from a failure as who's the culprit rather than what happened," Edmondson says. "And when you walk in with that frame in mind, you are very eager to find out that it wasn't you."

So, approach your failures with the question of "what happened" rather than "why did it happen" or "who did it." Get as detailed as you can in your description of what went down in your trial. "Why" or "who" tend to be emotionally loaded questions unlike "what," and although they are useful to ask later in your line of questioning, they are not good questions to start with, she says.

"A thoughtful retelling of figuring out exactly what happened points to the places where it broke down" without falling victim to the faulty mindset of trying to pin the blame on someone or something, Edmondson says.

Make sure the people around you feel comfortable speaking up

A concept "vital to mastering failure" is psychological safety, "the belief that you can speak up honestly and candidly about any aspect of the work with a question, concern or a dissenting view."

Making the people around you feel psychologically safe ensures they can speak up quickly when they believe you are making a mistake. Fostering this environment can help you prevent many kinds of unnecessary failure, she says.

It also helps the people working with you to be more willing to try new things themselves. If your colleagues or employees are scared of retaliation for their mistakes, they might be tempted to hold back on new ideas. With psychological safety "come tomorrow's game-changing ideas," Edmondson says.

There are three ways you can increase the psychological safety of those around you. You can call attention to the novelty or riskiness of the problem, to make people feel comfortable sharing their opinions about it. Edmondson advises saying things like "We've never done a project like this" or "There's a lot of uncertainty in the plan" when trying out these new things. Calling attention to these attributes of the work makes it seem sensible that everyone's voice matters, she says.

Then you can "invite input proactively" by asking questions every step along the way. Asking questions doesn't necessarily guarantee that people will tell you the truth every time, but it makes it "crystal clear that you actually want to hear from someone," she says.

And lastly, when someone does speak out against you, respond in a forward-looking and empathetic way. A good example that Edmondson advises to use is "Thank you so much for letting me know." or "Thanks for the clear line of sight." followed by a "How can I help?"

Kind Snacks founder and billionaire Daniel Lubetzky told CNBC Make It earlier this year that surrounding himself with people that give him honest, raw feedback and fostering an environment of "hearty debate" is his no.1 tip for success.

"If you don't surround yourself with those people, then it is so much harder to [achieve success] because you can go into 'I'm amazing' mode and not realize when you are screwing up," he said.

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