In A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson talks about the importance of errors in evolution:

The balance between accuracy and errors in [DNA] replication is a fine one. Too many errors and the organism can’t function, but too few and it sacrifices adaptability. A similar balance must exist between stability in an organism and innovation.

Nature abhors a perfectionist. Likewise, markets won’t permit the long-term survival of companies overly concerned about error avoidance.

Any company's current environment (and success) is temporary.  Survival requires positive change. It requires innovation.  Nature's way of creating innovation is through the allowance for error and diversity. An organism's chances for survival in an ever-changing environment increase if the organism itself is ever-changing.

It's not a huge stretch to consider employees the DNA of a company. Companies are fundamentally composed of people, and there's a great deal of overlap in personality types across companies—even very dissimilar companies.

A company's workforce should work with goals in common, but like DNA, a company's people must be allowed to err if the company is to survive and adapt.

Overly-imposed uniformity, unwillingness to hear new ideas, and suppressing investment in metric-less cultural assets are all things that leave an organization vulnerable to external change. Extinction awaits companies who are unwilling to err.