When a project fails, a launch flops, or a decision turns out to have been wrong, the modern organization does not have a failure. It has a learning opportunity. The failure is not denied, exactly; it is reclassified as tuition, and the question of who paid it is left off the slide.

The phrase is kinder than it sounds, and that is its danger. A culture that cannot say “that failed” cannot say why, and a culture that cannot say why will do it again, this time calling it a “growth moment.” The vocabulary of relentless positivity makes the honest post-mortem impossible, because the honest post-mortem needs the plain word to begin.

The family is large and cheerful: “challenge” for problem, “opportunity” for crisis, “feedback” for criticism, “areas for development” for things you are bad at. Mamet’s diagnosis applies to all of them. The speaker is protected first.