Skip to Main Content
HBS Home
  • About
  • Academic Programs
  • Alumni
  • Faculty & Research
  • Baker Library
  • Giving
  • Harvard Business Review
  • Initiatives
  • News
  • Recruit
  • Map / Directions
Faculty & Research
  • Faculty
  • Research
  • Featured Topics
  • Academic Units
  • …→
  • Harvard Business School→
  • Faculty & Research→
Publications
Publications
  • April 2011
  • Article
  • Harvard Business Review

Why Leaders Don't Learn from Success

By: Francesca Gino and Gary P. Pisano
  • Format:Print
  • | Pages:7 
ShareBar

Abstract

We argue that for a variety of psychological reasons, it is often much harder for leaders and organizations to learn from success than to learn from failure. Success creates three kinds of traps that often impede deep learning. The first is attribution error or the tendency to see superior performance as rooted in one's actions rather than other factors (such as luck). The second is that success feeds overconfidence bias, which can then blind leaders to potential future problems and opportunities for innovation. The third is a tendency to fail to probe the root causes of success. Whereas post-mortems after failure are becoming a norm in many organizations, such soul searching rarely occurs after success. This causes leaders and their organizations to miss opportunities to develop deep causal knowledge that can lead to greater long-term improvements. We suggest a number of concrete actions leaders can take to help themselves and their organizations avoid the success-breeds-failure trap.

Keywords

Learning; Innovation And Management; Leadership; Failure; Success; Performance Evaluation; Prejudice And Bias

Citation

Gino, Francesca, and Gary P. Pisano. "Why Leaders Don't Learn from Success." Harvard Business Review 89, no. 4 (April 2011): 68–74.
  • Find it at Harvard

About The Authors

Francesca Gino

Negotiation, Organizations & Markets
→More Publications

Gary P. Pisano

Technology and Operations Management
→More Publications

More from the Authors

    • Journal of World Business

    Variety of Innovation in Global Value Chains

    By: Giulio Buciuni and Gary P. Pisano
    • December 2020
    • Faculty Research

    Pal’s Sudden Service—Scaling an Organizational Model to Drive Growth

    By: Francesca Gino, Gary P. Pisano and Alexander Rohe
    • December 2020
    • Faculty Research

    Scaling Well by Doing Good: Motivating Talent at b.good

    By: Francesca Gino, Gary P. Pisano and Alexander Rohe
More from the Authors
  • Variety of Innovation in Global Value Chains By: Giulio Buciuni and Gary P. Pisano
  • Pal’s Sudden Service—Scaling an Organizational Model to Drive Growth By: Francesca Gino, Gary P. Pisano and Alexander Rohe
  • Scaling Well by Doing Good: Motivating Talent at b.good By: Francesca Gino, Gary P. Pisano and Alexander Rohe
ǁ
Campus Map
Harvard Business School
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
→Map & Directions
→More Contact Information
  • Make a Gift
  • Site Map
  • Jobs
  • Harvard University
  • Trademarks
  • Policies
  • Digital Accessibility
Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College