Prepared to Be Wrong
What does it mean to be prepared to be wrong?
Being prepared to be wrong is a critical mindset for product discovery that involves balancing confidence in what you know with doubt about whether you're actually right. This wisdom—as organizational psychologist Karl Weick defines it—means having enough confidence to move forward while maintaining enough doubt to recognize when you need to course correct.
Decision-making research from Chip and Dan Heath, authors of Decisive, shows that to make better decisions, we need to assume we will be wrong. When teams honestly track the impact of their product changes, they discover they're wrong more often than not, even when they feel confident. This is hard to accept because our egos get in the way.
Why is being prepared to be wrong essential for discovery?
To get value out of discovery activities, teams need to adopt several mindsets—and being prepared to be wrong is one of the most important. This mindset involves:
Trusting experimental data even when it contradicts what you expected or wanted to see.
Having intellectual honesty about what you're actually learning from research and experiments, not just what confirms your existing beliefs.
Connecting learning to product decisions by letting what you discover shape the choices you make, not just reinforcing decisions you've already committed to.
When teams focus on learning from failed experiments rather than just celebrating successes, they develop a true experimental mindset. This means introducing doubt into decision-making and assuming your ideas will need multiple iterations.
How can teams put systems in place to catch when they're wrong?
The challenge isn't just having the right mindset—it's creating structures that help you recognize when you're wrong so you can adjust quickly:
Measure outcomes explicitly by tracking the actual impact of your product changes, not just whether you shipped what you planned.
Draw lines in the sand before building by defining what success looks like and committing to specific metrics you'll evaluate.
Make hypotheses explicit so you know exactly what you're testing and can clearly see when the results don't match your assumptions.
These systems help catch errors early, before you've invested too much time going in the wrong direction. Frequent course corrections based on learning become part of the normal rhythm of product work.
Learn more:
- Be Prepared To Be Wrong
- The Best Continuous Discovery Teams Cultivate These Mindsets
Related terms:
- Discovery Mindset
- Assumption Testing
- Experiments
- Decision Making
Last Updated: October 25, 2025