Individually this is hard. People grow up inside of families and cultures that are "blame and punish". This kind of culture ends up being self-destructive: peop

Individually this is hard. People grow up inside of families and cultures that are "blame and punish". This kind of culture ends up being self-destructive: people can't learn from their mistakes, and will do anything to avoid blame and the punishment (loss of status, money, etc...) that comes with it. In this culture, dishonesty, manipulation and politics are the norm. Incidentally, iteration and coordination is difficult because there is no incentive to do things where you may be blamed for others out of your span of influence. On the other side, there is a "culture of learning", where we expect sometimes to fail, and we save blame and punishment for people who do not learn from their failures (in practice, this is a lot like repeating the same behavior and expecting a different outcome). Yes, sometimes a mistake is costly, but if the person making the mistake learns not to repeat it, we win. If we find a way to make that mistake impossible in the future, we win. In this environment, honesty can be expected (confessing within reason), and will be the norm. In a culture of learning, iteration becomes a way of life and cross organization coordination is much easier. In my business life I much prefer a culture of learning or one of blame, and in hiring, especially mid a senior level people, I'm careful to hire people that value learning and like to put problems on trial instead of people.