How Teams Treat Failure: Run an Autopsy Without Blame — with David Esposito

Autopsy Without Blame: David Esposito on How Great Teams Treat Failure

In this post: ONL Therapeutics CEO David Esposito explains how teams treat failure when it counts, using an autopsy without blame borrowed from Army after-action reviews to surface the truth, own mistakes, and help people get back in the fight.

David Esposito does not hide the bankruptcies. By his own accounting, he has taken a few companies into bankruptcy over a career spent building early- and mid-stage life sciences businesses. Those losses shaped his thinking on how teams treat failure.

"When you take one over the cliff, you feel it and you feel responsible for it," Esposito said on Activating Greatness, the leadership podcast from Velocity Advisory Group. "You got to own it."

Esposito, now President and CEO of ONL Therapeutics, an Ann Arbor company developing therapies to protect vision in retinal disease, graduated from West Point, led an infantry platoon with the 101st Airborne Division, and earned a Bronze Star for combat action in Iraq in 1991. He started in business as a sales representative at Merck, rose into U.S. commercial strategy, and later led companies through sales to Thermo Fisher Scientific and Exact Sciences.

Yet the subject that fires him up is failure and what a team does after it. Most leadership content, he said, is "pump up stuff." Building companies is different. "You're making mistakes, and how do you respond and overcome those?" he said.

What You Tolerate Becomes the Culture

Esposito grew up in the Army with a blunt phrase: There are no bad soldiers, only bad leaders. He still believes it holds directionally. When a team struggles, the leader's first move should be self-reflection about tone, direction, and support tools.

Sometimes, though, a person is in the wrong role or no longer wants to be there. "The sooner you can figure that thing out, get them in a direction they need to go, the better off the team will be," he said.

Host Alec McChesney pointed out what happens when leaders ignore a poor fit: The committed people on the team start asking what the standard really is. Esposito agreed. "What you tolerate becomes the culture," he said.

The same test applies when something breaks. "Is there a bunch of finger-pointing, or are people like, hey, let's get around the table, let's solve it?" he said.

How Teams Treat Failure: The Autopsy Without Blame

Many companies say they are comfortable with failure. Fewer have a system for it. Esposito borrowed his from the Army's after-action reviews.

"Let's put it on the whiteboard. Let's walk through it, no finger-pointing," he said. "Let's really just have an autopsy without blame."

The process starts with an open, honest, and transparent look at the facts and the results. Then the team looks for what he called "nuggets of learning and growth" and puts a course correction in place. Mistakes cost time and money, he said, and a company that keeps making them runs out of gas.

"Let's really just have an autopsy without blame."

David Esposito, President and CEO, ONL Therapeutics

The review also reveals how a team thinks about ownership. A project leader should feel real responsibility, Esposito said, but a healthy team goes further. A teammate asks whether he could have taken something off the lead's plate. An unhealthy team calls it the lead's problem.

Urgency, Hunger, and No Masks

At a small company, Esposito does not wait for a formal debrief. He folds the topic into weekly meetings or creates a forum if none exists. When ONL hit manufacturing challenges, the response was immediate. "We can't sit around and hope it gets better," he said. "Let's get in the room, let's talk about it."

An autopsy is rarely a single meeting, he warned, because complex problems reveal new facts overnight. Two principles hold it together: a sense of urgency and "a sense of hunger for getting to the truth." That hunger can be hard to find, he said, because some people would rather keep the mask on at the masquerade party than say what they really think happened.

Leaders are often the reason. Esposito described a staff meeting where a team member raises a concern, the boss punts, and two weeks later the team is in the middle of a mistake. The fix starts at the top. Leaders have to model the way, stay open to critique, and admit their own shortcomings first.

Prop Them Back Up

The review also has a human side. The person who raised a hard issue needs to hear, more than once, that it was the right call. The people behind the mistake need something, too.

"We're all human. We make mistakes," Esposito said. A leader, he said, has to dial into that moment and prop people back up.

He looks for two things in someone working to bounce back. First, a reminder that they have recovered from setbacks before. Second, alignment with where the team is going. ONL's vision is to help patients see the future, and he asks whether the person is still hungry to help make that work. When someone says they are no longer in the fight, he said, you have to create the forum for that conversation.

The Worst Case Is Not the End

Growth forces a similar conversation. Not everyone who starts at a small table is ready to scale with a company to 300 people, Esposito said. Some people thrive at one stage and not the next, and telling them so is one of the hardest talks a leader has.

His own setbacks changed how he leads a room. Having seen the worst case, he approaches even a good direction with humility, because anything can happen. A failure, he said, is "not personally limiting. It's not defining you for your journey. You get back in and solve it."

"Paint the worst scenario. I've probably walked down through a few of those," he said, adding that he does not care to repeat them. In life sciences innovation, he said, "a lot of it doesn't work out." When it doesn't, you hope to move the science forward, rally around something else, and keep going.

Other guests on Activating Greatness have explored the same ground. Lisa Calicchio of WCG explained why admitting what you don't know builds psychological safety, and Maggie Reed of Gilbane Building Company described how relentless resilience drives performance.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an autopsy without blame?

An autopsy without blame is a review of a failure that focuses on facts instead of fault. David Esposito, President and CEO of ONL Therapeutics, adapted it from the Army's after-action reviews. The team puts what happened on the whiteboard, walks through it with no finger-pointing, pulls out lessons, and agrees on a course correction.

How should leaders respond when a team fails?

Start with self-reflection, according to David Esposito. Leaders should ask whether they set the right tone, direction, and support tools. Then gather the team quickly, review the facts without blame, and admit your own shortcomings first. Finally, help the people who made the mistake get back in the game quickly.

How do you build a culture where people admit mistakes?

People speak up when leaders make it safe. David Esposito said leaders must stay open to critique and avoid dismissing concerns in meetings, since a punted issue can become a failure weeks later. "What you tolerate becomes the culture," he said. Teams that share responsibility, rather than blaming a project lead, surface mistakes sooner.

Can resilience be coached in employees?

David Esposito sees two ingredients. First, remind people that they have bounced back from setbacks before. Second, check whether they are still aligned with the organization's vision. When someone is no longer committed to the mission, he said, the leader should create a forum for an honest conversation about a better fit.

The Takeaway: Keep Climbing Back in the Ring

Esposito's daily leadership habit is a line he used to tell his kids. "No matter how tough the fight is, just keep climbing back in the ring," he said. His best advice is as plain: Be useful and get stuff done.

Failure will come for every team. The leaders worth following own the loss, run the autopsy without blame, lift their people back up, and step back into the ring with a clearer plan than the one that failed.

Listen to the Full Episode

Hear David Esposito's full conversation with host Alec McChesney on Activating Greatness. Find it on YouTube, or listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.