Noble failure occurs when:

❶ you have a good plan and know what you're doing, you've thought everything through carefully, and have implemented with sufficient management discipline, that if you look back in review, you'd conclude it was thoughtfully done

❷ you have a reasonable contingency plan to deal with any initial failure and the contingency plan must have been implemented

❸ you need to debrief yourself and ask what you can learn from the experience that will lead your company to be smarter next time.