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.

I don't mean to imply that working in a fearless organization takes more effort or a tremendously difficult undertaking. It doesn't. But initially, when we've been entrenched in fear and its attendant mental frameworks, it's not always obvious.

Good failures are those that bring us valuable new information that simply could not have been gained any other way.

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.

People such as James West and Jennifer Heemstra and Clarence Dennis skillfully applied the lessons they gleaned from painful setbacks as part of building successful and fulfilling lives. But we’re not hardwired to confront failure thoughtfully; we have to learn to do it.