We now know that psychological safety emerges as a property of a group, and that groups in organizations tend to have very interpersonal climates. Even in a company with a strong corporate culture, you will find pockets of both high and low psychological safety.

A former employee reported that members of his Los Angeles branch opened accounts or credit cards for customers without their consent, saying a computer glitch had occurred if customers complained. He also reported that employees lied to customers-saying that certain products could only be purchased together-to hit their numbers. Other tactics to meet sales goals included encouraging customers to open unnecessary multiple checking accounts – one for groceries, one for travel, one for emergencies, and so on – and creating fake email addressees to enroll customers in online banking.

Like Volkswagen, Wells Fargo's avoidable failure was not the result of one bad apple but of a system that demanded hitting targets so ambitious they could only be met by deceit. Employees operated in a culture of fear that brooked no dissent. Rather than manifesting interest in salespeople's experiences while executing the cross-selling strategy and using what was being learned in the field to shift or sharpen the company's strategy, managers sent a clear message: produce – or else.

In many organizations, like those discussed in this chapter, countless small problems routinely occur, presenting early warning signs that the company's strategy may be falling short and needs to be revisited. Yet these signals are often squandered. Preventing avoidable failure thus starts with encouraging people throughout a company to push back, share data, and actively report on what is really happening in the lab or in the market so as to create a continuous loop of learning and agile execution.

Now consider what happens when senior executives, or parents, for that matter, state unequivocally that failure is off-limits, that only good results are acceptable. Failures don’t stop. They simply go underground. Unwittingly, the financial services executives I spoke with were at risk of inhibiting the transmission of bad news. That wasn’t their goal. Their goal was to encourage excellence. But it’s human nature to hide the truth when it’s clear that sharing it will bring punishment—or even just disapproval. Our fear of rejection presents the third barrier to practicing the science of failing well.