The statement by the GB stinks. I smell a red herring in the first part of the second sentence (in bold) coupled with a deflection technique.
The Governing Body is neither inspired nor infallible. Therefore, it can err in doctrinal matters or in organizational direction. In fact, the Watch Tower Publications Index includes the heading “Beliefs Clarified,” which lists adjustments in our Scriptural understanding since 1870.
I believe the real subject is a yet unknown or unpublished failure in relation to organizational direction. This is what the statement could really be about:
The Governing Body is neither inspired nor infallible. Therefore, it can err in . . . organizational direction.
The GB have never cared about changing doctrinal beliefs, nor in the flip-flops of Watchtower teachings. They do care about money and this has been evident the past year or so in their cutbacks in printing, grab for cash, selling of assets, seizing of kingdom halls, begging for donations, downsizing, and various money raising schemes.
This recent statement, if indeed about doctrinal errors, is serious enough to have warranted discussion at last month's Annual General Meeting but was not mentioned.
Something has changed in the past few weeks that the GB may have been hoping they could get away with or keep hidden, possibly to do with organizational directions they have given to the Watchtower corporations.
The February 2017 Watchtower statement, highlighted above, is also out of context with the paragraph, the subheading and the entire study article. It appears more like an afterthought designed to prepare for a future organizational direction failure of such a scale that the GB have no control over.
It is strange that the GB would allow organizational failures of the Watchtower to be placed at their feet and not at the feet of the recently reshuffled Watchtower board of directors. Let the finger pointing and blame shifting begin.