Teams make important decisions and some of them will not be good ones, despite the very best of intentions. It is unrealistic to suggest that poor decision making, or for that matter even disastrous decision making, is avoidable. The key message hearkens back to a point we made early in Chapter 1, which is to create an organization that can optimally learn from failure. Learning from failure is difficult when people suffer—especially innocent ones. The key for decision-making teams within organizations is to develop and use decision-making procedures, such as veto policies and preestablished criteria to guide decision making. All these decisions involve a certain level of risk, but that risk can be minimized. There is a clear difference between principled risk taking and unethical risk taking. Creating cultures of integrity involves ethical leadership from the top down and making sure that incentives for behavior do not encourage or reward unethical behavior.