Celebrate process and honesty, not just results

Some companies punish people when they are wrong. Either overtly or with company culture. This can be something as small as a snarky comment in meetings. Either by the manager, or allowed by the manager.

When you force your people to try to defend broken features because their reputation and eventually their job may be on the line, you run the risk of keeping bad features in your product.

This means you are not letting better features in. This means you are paying good money for bad features.

We should foster a culture of fearless experimentation and learning. What this means is that we are not afraid to try things out. We are also not afraid to admit we were wrong. We learned something.

When people feel that it is okay to be wrong, they are more likely to look beyond their fears and image. Instead of fighting to defend a broken feature, they will help figure out why it is broken, what can be done to fix it, or if it should just be removed again.

Of course successes should be celebrated. But try to also celebrate good process, learning, and admitting to being wrong.