It is not failure that is the problem, it is the fear of failure. That is why you see the lack of accountability and the multitude of excuses. The lower the risk, the lousier the returns. If you always want to play it safe, you end up as an also-ran. Without having failed or always denying you have failed means that you will never recognise what is failure and by extension, you will never know what is true success. SG, as a society, have been taught to be afraid of failure because it has been drummed into our heads that failure is not an option. That means that when faced with options, we will pick the one that is least likely to fail, not the one that is most likely to succeed. Least likely to fail certainly does not mean that it is a success. It simply means that it is very unlikely to turn out to be the worst option but it also means that it is unlikely to be the best option. If the stakes are too high, then you put in place mitigation strategies in case of failure but taking the safest option every time is not going to lead to success. By being afraid of failure, we have lost the knowledge of how to handle failure.
LKY is someone who will not wimped out and choose the safest option but I cannot say the same for the current generation of leaders. That is the failure of LKY for not having built a proper system due to his ego and staying in power for too long.