Okay, okay, I know you've heard this a gazillion and three times: If you don't ever fail at anything, chances are you aren't trying anything new. But there's a difference between hearing something a gazillion times and truly embracing it as a core principle in your life and workplace.

The creator of Spanx, Sara Blakely, credits her father for instilling a healthy attitude about failure by consistently asking her and her brother: "What did you fail at today?" That question helped her view failure as part of the learning process, rather than a weakness. As the CEO of Spank, she would hold "Oops Meetings" where she would confess to an "oops" she did, sharing her failure with lots of humor that culminated in a dance to a song that linked to the oops. By doing this, she made it okay for employees to be vulnerable, admit to their mistakes, and most importantly, to learn from them. 

Williams College mathematics professor Edward Burger tells his students that to earn an "A" they have to fail, because 5% of their grade will be based on an essay describing a mistake they made and how making that mistake helped them uncover a new way of seeing the problem.

As I talk about in my Leaning Into Change presentations, a defining cultural moment in workplaces happens whenever there's a point of perceived failure. These are critical inflection points that, depending on how it is handled, can make or break your culture. 

If you value creativity, innovation, and risk-taking, then your actions need to support and even encourage smart failures at work, which is why the Swedish software company Centiro has a "failure club" where employees hold humorous meetings to talk about what they've learned through failure; why the Grey Group advertising agency has the Heroic Failure Award; and why Eli Lilly pharmaceuticals holds "failure parties" to help employees learn and regroup after a setback.