I also work as a consultant but for a very tiny firm (12 employees total including the two co-owners) dealing with a very niche issue. During my time here I've seen the exact opposite of what thenewgreen is talking about and how much it fails.

No one here tries to think critically about what happened with a client, why we got it or why we didn't (well not beyond "another consultant firm stole em"). Because of this the firm has basically stagnated it seems. We have meetings where everyone just tries to brag about what they are doing and nothing is gained.

The only time we've though self critically is when we lost a bunch of hires (either because they were fired or left). The owner finally made people think about what happened in the hiring procedure and why we didn't get anyone new. This has helped a little but not a lot, because it was only a blip.

Pardon all this rambling, but the gist of what I'm saying here is that thenewgreen is right, one has to analyze what happened. Don't let failure drag you down because you are analyzing it, try to learn from it instead.