The Real Risk Isn’t Failure — It’s Pretending It Never Happens

In the 1950s, an Australian scientist named David Warren attended a trade show and saw a German-made dictaphone. His thought? “What if we used this to record the final moments of a flight, including the conversations in the cockpit?”. I told this story to a young adult cohort at University of Bath School of Management and had to sense check if the cohort knew what a dictaphone was…there were some blank faces – but that’s on me! 😊 Anyway….

…Warren created the black box, which, is bright red by the way. Why? So it can be found in wreckage. Genius. This invention transformed aviation safety, creating 8 decades, yes 80 years of learning. The result…today, flying is one of the safest ways to travel, with accidents occurring just once every 2.1 million flights (IATA).

Now contrast that with U.S. healthcare, where an estimated 400,000 preventable deaths occur annually due to medical error. This is largely driven by a fear of reprisal, losing their jobs, litigation. This is the equivalent of two jumbo jets crashing every single day, as outlined by Matthew Syed, so poignantly in his book #BlackBoxThinking.

Why the difference?

Aviation embraced failure as a teacher. Healthcare, in many cases, still treats it as a threat - driven by a culture of blame, litigation, and denial.

Failure is hard. But it’s essential for learning. We were all toddlers who learned to walk, or a little later, learned to ride a bike. Mistakes aren’t just inevitable - they’re instructive. As children we do not have the inhibitions or the concerns about face saving or reputational damage. Except for these two sporting icons who faced into failure as a learning opportunity.

🏀 Michael Jordan said:

“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Yet when we see the highlights reel of his career, it’s the buzzer-beaters shot, the trophies, the player of the year awards…but he’s humble enough to share, that behind every win is a trail of missed shots and painful lessons. Hats of Mr. Jordan.

🎾 And then there’s Roger Federer, who revealed last year, in his commencement speech at Dartmouth College in June, to graduates about to embark on the next chapters of their lives:

“In my entire career, I won just 54% of the points I played. Think about that. Even when I was winning, I was barely winning more than half the time.”

Federer’s brilliance wasn’t about perfection - it was about not dwelling on every error or mistake, more mastering how to overcome hard moments. About showing up, point after point, learning, adjusting, rather than being stuck due to failures and mistakes.

💡 The takeaway?

Failure isn’t the opposite of success, it’s the path to it.

If we want to build high-performing teams that try new things…guess what, not everything will go to plan, mistakes will happen and so we need to stop fearing failure and reposition it as a learning opportunity. That means creating cultures of psychological safety, where people can speak up, own mistakes, and grow…without fear.

Because the real risk isn’t failure.

It’s pretending it never happens.