Simply talking about the failure with humor and understanding sends a powerful message to workers that failures are to be expected when innovation is important to a company. It can create a climate of a friendly, forgiving workplace that truly encourages innovation.

I have found that some of our best classroom discussions are when we cover business cases that resulted in failures. Understanding how the mistakes were made and why decision-makers overlooked important clues from customers, suppliers and competitors often lead to great insights for students. Knowing where your potential blind spots are can help a company avoid bigger and more costly mistakes. Covering up mistakes can lead to hypocrisy and more mistakes, since decision-makers may miss out on the valuable learning that may come from understanding past errors.

Try a session in which you ask people to talk about their most memorable failure. If done correctly, it can humanize managers, send a signal that failure does not destroy careers and maybe result in learning that leads to building creative products and services that become major successes.

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Hal Heaton is affiliated with the BYU Center for Entrepreneurship. He can be reached via e-mail at cfe@byu.edu.