India, May 28 -- Modern society claims to admire resilience. In truth, it worships success. Children are rewarded for achievement, companies celebrate flawless execution and social media turns accomplishment into spectacle. Failure, meanwhile, is treated as embarrassment at best and deficiency at worst. Yet this instinct may be precisely backwards. As Matthew Syed argues, progress depends less on avoiding mistakes than on learning from them.

Failure is not the opposite of success. It is often the precondition for it.

This is not an argument for incompetence. Failure can be painful, costly and destabilising. But there is a crucial distinction between failing and failing well. The former bruises the ego; the latter generates growth. The d...