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Innovation sits near the top of most organisations' stated values - but when a project stumbles, the instinct is still to find fault, assign blame and move on fast. Dr. Melisa Buie has spent more than 30 years working across industry, government and academia, and is co-author of Faceplant: FREE Yourself From Failure's Funk. We sat down with her to talk about why organisations get stuck in blame cycles, and what HR and L&D leaders can actually do to build a genuine culture of experimentation.
Fear of failure is deep-rooted in organisations and hard to break
Dr. Melisa Buie
Co-author of Faceplant: FREE Yourself From Failure's Funk
"Fear of failure is learned, not innate," says Dr. Buie. "Watch a toddler learning to walk - they fail constantly, adjust, and try again without a shred of self-consciousness. Somewhere along the way, most of us absorb a different message: that mistakes should be hidden rather than examined, and that admitting a misstep is a sign of weakness rather than growth."
She points out that this plays out in very predictable ways at work. "Teams stick to what's familiar. Individuals steer clear of stretch assignments. Post-project reviews turn into exercises in justification instead of honest reflection. You end up with an organisation running on autopilot, wondering why the same problems keep resurfacing."
Creating a culture of experimentation takes courage
"Definitely," she says in answer to my question about whether there is a neuroscience angle to it. "When we perceive a threat - and social judgement over a mistake absolutely counts as a threat - the reactive brain takes over, and our capacity for creative thinking shrinks. We default to fight, flight, freeze or fawn, and none of those states involve learning."
Her conclusion for HR leaders is direct: "If you want a culture of experimentation, you need to create conditions where people can interrupt that fear response and re-engage their thinking brain."
Curiosity isn't attributed to character
"Curiosity is a discipline, not a personality trait," Dr. Buie explains. "It means approaching setbacks with genuine interest in what happened and why, instead of rushing to assign blame and close the matter."
For HR leaders, she says it can start with something as simple as changing the questions asked. "Instead of 'What went wrong?' try 'What did we expect, and how did reality differ?' Instead of 'Whose fault was this?' try 'What contributed to this outcome, and what can we actually influence going forward?' Questions like that cut through the stories we tell ourselves and get to what actually happened."
Watch a toddler learning to walk - they fail constantly, adjust, and try again without a shred of self-consciousness. Somewhere along the way, most of us absorb a different message: that mistakes should be hidden rather than examined, and that admitting a misstep is a sign of weakness rather than growth
She adds that expectations themselves are often the real culprit. "We tend to overestimate what we can achieve and underestimate how long things will take. When reality doesn't match those expectations, it can feel like failure even when it isn't. Grounding expectations before a project begins closes that gap - and avoids the demoralising spiral that follows when it isn't closed."
