“What’s a little white lie?” you might ask. After all, putting a positive spin on failure can help us save face. But here’s the problem: If we don’t acknowledge we failed—if we avoid a true reckoning—we can’t learn anything. In fact, failure can make things worse if we get the wrong messages from it. When we attribute our failures to external factors—the regulators, the customers, the competitors—we have no reason to change course.
