Hey there,
Ever caught yourself saying “failure is not an option” to your team? Maybe during a product launch, a critical client presentation, or when the stakes felt impossibly high?
I get it. It sounds motivating. Powerful. Decisive.
But here’s what I’ve learned after years of coaching leaders: that famous line from Apollo 13 might be one of the most misapplied pieces of advice in business today.
Let me explain why—and what you should be saying instead.
The Apollo 13 Quote We All Know (And Misuse)
“Failure is not an option.”
It’s iconic. It entered our cultural vocabulary through the Apollo 13 mission and subsequent film. And in that specific context—with astronauts’ lives hanging in the balance—it made perfect sense. When human lives are at stake, you do everything humanly possible to bring people home safely.
But here’s the problem: your quarterly sales target isn’t Apollo 13. Your new marketing campaign isn’t a life-or-death mission. And when we borrow crisis-level language for everyday business challenges, we create unintended consequences.
What You’re Actually Creating When You Ban Failure
When you tell your team that failure is not an option, you think you’re lighting a fire under them. You believe you’re inspiring excellence and determination.
What you’re actually doing? You’re motivating them to avoid failure—and that’s completely different from motivating them to achieve success.
Here’s what happens in a “no failure allowed” culture:
- People stop proposing innovative ideas (too risky)
- Employees hide mistakes instead of learning from them
- Teams play it safe rather than pushing boundaries
- Creativity gets suffocated by fear
- Problems get covered up instead of solved
The tragic irony? In trying to prevent failure, you create an environment where your business will eventually fail—because it stops innovating, stops adapting, and stops competing.
The Inconvenient Truth About How We Actually Learn
Let’s get real for a second. How did you learn to ride a bike? By falling off a few times.
How do scientists make breakthroughs? Through experiments that don’t work.
How did you gain your most valuable professional lessons? I’d bet money that at least some of them came from mistakes, setbacks, or outright failures.
As humans, we’re literally wired to learn from failure. It’s not a bug in our system—it’s a feature. When we remove the possibility of failure, we don’t create excellence. We create stagnation.
The NASA Lesson We Conveniently Forgot
Here’s what’s fascinating about using Apollo 13 as our business mantra: we cherry-picked the wrong lesson.
Yes, during that critical mission, bringing those astronauts home safely was non-negotiable. But do you think NASA just moved on afterward? Of course not.
They analyzed every decision, every system failure, every close call. They documented what went wrong and why. They used those lessons to make future missions safer and more successful.
The same organization that said “failure is not an option” during the crisis also built an entire culture around learning from failures in their testing, simulations, and post-mission analyses.
They understood something crucial: failure in a controlled environment, followed by analysis and learning, is how you prevent catastrophic failure when it really matters.
What “Failing Forward” Actually Looks Like
So what does this mean for you as a leader?
It means deliberately creating spaces where your team can:
Propose bold ideas without fear of ridicule or punishment. The next game-changing innovation for your business might sound crazy at first.
Test new approaches in controlled environments. Not every client interaction or product launch—but create safe spaces for experimentation.
Share mistakes openly so the entire team can learn. When someone discovers what doesn’t work, that’s valuable information for everyone.
Iterate and improve based on real-world feedback, even when that feedback reveals flaws.
The key phrase here is “controlled environment.” We’re not talking about reckless risk-taking or failing to plan. We’re talking about intentional experimentation with appropriate guardrails.
Your Action Step: Create Innovation Space This Week
Here’s what I want you to do:
Go back to your team and create one specific space where failure is explicitly allowed. Maybe it’s:
- A monthly “crazy ideas” brainstorming session where no suggestion is too wild
- A small budget for testing new approaches to persistent problems
- A “lessons learned” debrief where mistakes are discussed without blame
- A pilot program where a small team can test a new process before rolling it out
Make it clear: in this space, trying something that doesn’t work is not only acceptable—it’s expected. The only real failure is not learning from what happened.
The Bottom Line
Failure is an option. In fact, it’s often a good one—as long as you learn from it, grow through it, and use those lessons to get better.
Your job as a leader isn’t to prevent all failure. It’s to create an environment where:
- Small failures lead to big learnings
- Calculated risks are encouraged and supported
- Mistakes are analyzed, not punished
- Innovation thrives because people aren’t paralyzed by fear
The businesses that will thrive in the years ahead won’t be the ones where failure is forbidden. They’ll be the ones where failure is understood, expected in the right contexts, and systematically converted into competitive advantage.
So go ahead—give your team permission to fail. You might be surprised by what they achieve.
About Monday Myth Check
Monday Myth Check is a weekly dose of reality where Jono Brake holds up commonly held leadership beliefs and asks the question “What if this was not true”. You can find the weekly videos and other posts by following Jono Brake on LinkedIn or following The Forged Leader, as well as on Youtube @jonobrake.
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