Written By: Mariann Johnson, VP, Strategic Partnerships
Failing Forward: Why Our Team Promise Starts With Learning
No one likes to fail. Especially not publicly, especially not when you are the one in charge. But one of the most important promises we can make as a team is this: when things go wrong, we will not hide, deflect, or assign blame. We will learn, improve, and do better next time.
That belief is at the heart of our new team’s promise to embrace failure as an opportunity for growth. Not failure for failure’s sake, but failure that leads to real, measurable improvement.
Why Admitting Mistakes Matters
In many workplaces, mistakes are quietly buried or quickly explained away. The problem with that approach is simple: if we cannot admit something went wrong, we cannot fix it. Admitting a mistake requires humility and trust, but it also signals professionalism. It says, “We care enough about the outcome to get this right.”
For teams, this creates psychological safety. People are more willing to raise concerns, test ideas, and take thoughtful risks when they know mistakes will be treated as learning moments rather than career-ending events.
A Very Public Lesson
I learned this lesson the hard way during a public hearing, in a pevious position, I was responsible for leading. It did not go well. Important details were missed, expectations were not aligned, and the result was a very visible failure. There was no spinning it. No one else to blame. It was on me.
Afterward, I had two choices: move on quickly and hope it was forgotten, or slow down and ask why it happened. I chose the second option. I dissected every step of the process, identified what broke down, and documented what we should have done differently. The result was a 17-page checklist designed to make sure we never repeated that mistake.
It was not glamorous work, but it was necessary. And it worked. That checklist became a tool that improved preparation, communication, and outcomes moving forward.
Failure Only Counts If You Improve
Here is the key part of our team promise: admitting a mistake is not enough. Saying “we learned a lot” does not count unless something actually changes. Growth requires action. That might look like new processes, better documentation, clearer roles, or simply slowing down to ask better questions.
Failure becomes valuable only when it results in improvement. Otherwise, it is just a repeat performance waiting to happen.
The Big Takeaway
Embracing failure does not mean lowering standards or accepting poor outcomes. It means holding ourselves accountable, being honest about what did not work, and committing to doing better next time. Our new team promise is not about avoiding mistakes at all costs. It is about learning faster, improving intentionally, and turning hard moments into better systems.
Mistakes will happen. What matters is what we build because of them.
What is one failure that taught you something important, and how did you make sure that lesson actually stuck?