My Favorite Mistake: Learning Without Blame in Business and Leadership
My Favorite Mistake is a podcast about learning without blame in business and leadership. Despite the name, it’s not just my favorite mistake—it’s yours, it’s ours, and it’s what we can all learn from when things don’t go as planned. Hosted by author and consultant Mark Graban, each episode features honest conversations with leaders, executives, entrepreneurs, and changemakers about a meaningful mistake they made—and what they learned after things went wrong. How they responded. How they improved. How they grew as leaders. This isn’t a show about failure theater, gotcha moments, or simplistic “lessons learned.” It’s about how real people reflect, improve, and lead better in complex organizations—without scapegoating, shame, or hindsight bias. What You’ll Hear • Leadership and management mistakes that reshaped careers, teams, and organizations • How teams and leaders learn without blaming individuals • Insights about culture, systems, decision-making, and psychological safety • Practical lessons drawn from real experience, not abstract theory Guests come from business, healthcare, technology, sports, entertainment, government, and academia, sharing stories that reveal how learning actually happens. The Perspective Mark brings a systems-thinking lens grounded in Lean management, continuous improvement, and psychological safety. The focus is less on who messed up and more on what the system taught us. Who This Podcast Is For • Leaders and managers who want to learn from mistakes without blame • Executives working to build healthier, more resilient cultures • Professionals who believe improvement starts with reflection, not punishment My Favorite Mistake: Learning Without Blame in Business and Leadership
Episodes
In this episode of My Favorite Mistake, Mark Graban talks with Dr. Tyler B. Evans, infectious diseases and addiction medicine physician, public health leader, and author of Pandemics, Poverty, and Politics.
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Dr. Evans shares a deeply personal “mistake” — giving up his dream of working in global health abroad to take what he thought was a conventional job in the United States. That decision le...
A forgotten water heater tap led to an overnight leak, an unexpected ice rink, and a reminder that the real lesson isn’t about blame — it’s about designing systems that catch small mistakes before they spread.
A small, human slip led to a big, icy problem in a neighborhood in northwest China. After a woman forgot to turn off the tap on her solar water heater, water flowed unnoticed for nine hours — and overnight tem...
In Episode 339 of My Favorite Mistake, Mark Graban talks with Genevieve Skory, executive coach and former Chief Field Development Officer, about a leadership mistake that many high performers make: confusing performance with alignment.
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For years, Genevieve defined winning by revenue and results. Pressure was normal. Constant pivoting felt strategic. Intensity was rewarded. The numbers came i...
After winning gold at the Winter Olympics, skier Breezy Johnson did what champions do — she jumped for joy.
And her medal fell off.
She later joked, “Don’t jump in them… I was jumping in excitement and it broke,” adding that it was “not, like, crazy broken. But, a little broken.” Other athletes experienced similar ribbon failures during their celebrations.
In this episode of Mistake of the Week, Mark Graban looks at what happens wh...
What happens when a leader realizes their approach caused real harm?
In this episode of My Favorite Mistake, U.S. Marine Corps officer and leadership mentor Olaolu Ogunyemi shares a defining moment early in his career—recognizing that his leadership style, while well-intended, crossed a line and made a Marine cry.
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Rather than defending his authority, Olaolu reflects on the gap between intent...
Most of us pull up to a gas pump on autopilot—until something goes wrong.
In this Mistake of the Week, host Mark Graban looks at a real-world systems failure that affected hundreds of drivers across the Denver metro area. Due to an upstream error at a fuel terminal, diesel fuel was mistakenly delivered into the gasoline supply—leading to stalled cars, tow trucks, and costly repairs.
Instead of rushing to blame or punishment, Colora...
Ray Zinn—longtime CEO of Micrel Semiconductor and the longest-serving CEO of a publicly traded company in Silicon Valley history—doesn’t believe the real problem is making mistakes.
He believes the real failure is repeating the same mistake without fixing it.
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In this episode of My Favorite Mistake, Ray shares leadership lessons from nearly four decades running Micrel, including why popular s...
What happens when you know your value—but say a lower number anyway?
In this episode of My Favorite Mistake, Mark Graban is joined by Amy Rasdal, founder of Billable at the Beach and author of Land a Consulting Project Now. Amy shares her favorite mistake from the early days of consulting: undercharging for her work because of fear, even when she knew she was worth more.
Amy explains how that moment became a “gateway mistake,” lead...
A devastating hospital mistake in Glasgow was described by leaders as “human error,” even as they acknowledged that “very rigorous processes” were not followed.
In this episode of The Mistake of the Week, Mark Graban examines why suspensions and discipline don’t guarantee improvement — and how gaps between written procedures and real work create hidden risk.
Punishment may feel like accountability, but without fixing the system, th...
What happens when a business deal looks solid on paper—but falls apart in real life?
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My guest for Episode #335 of the My Favorite Mistake podcast is Kevin Hipes, an entrepreneur, author, and former city commissioner who’s been called the “New York Forrest Gump” because of the many lives he’s lived.
Kevin shares the story of one of his biggest—and most unforgettable—business mistakes: buying ...
“But I Wore the Juice”: The True Story That Inspired the Dunning–Kruger Effect | Mistake of the Week
What does a failed bank robbery have to do with one of the most cited ideas in psychology?
More than you might expect.
In this episode of My Favorite Mistake, Mark Graban tells the true story of McArthur Wheeler, a man who believed that rubbing lemon juice on his face would make him invisible to security cameras. Confident in his reasoning—and even more confident in his ability to test it—Wheeler walked into two Pittsburgh banks in...
Angie Callen — founder of Career Bend, host of No More Mondays, and author of Scary Good: Discovering Life Beyond the Sunday Scaries — shares why choosing engineering school became her favorite mistake.
In this episode, Angie reflects on becoming an engineer despite being deeply people-oriented, how that decision shaped her thinking, and why mistakes that “don’t fit” often unlock clarity, confidence, and unexpected opp...
In this week’s Mistake of the Week, a company’s HR team accidentally sent a mass termination email to the entire workforce — including the CEO. The culprit was an offboarding automation tool left in the wrong mode, turning a routine test into a company-wide panic.
Mark Graban explores what this moment teaches about automation, human fallibility, and the danger of relying on memory in systems that affect people’s livelihoods. Instea...
In this episode of My Favorite Mistake, Mark Graban talks with Jason Sherman, an entrepreneur, startup advisor, and educator, about the early startup mistakes that quietly shape everything that follows.
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Jason shares hard-earned lessons about choosing co-founders, distinguishing “smart money” from money alone, and why MVPs should accelerate learning rather than encourage overbuilding. Th...
Why do New Year’s resolutions fail so predictably—and what does that teach us about change at work? In this Mistake of the Week, Mark Graban explores why treating change as a test of willpower is a reliable setup for frustration, both personally and in organizations.
Drawing on behavioral psychology and leadership examples, the episode connects failed personal resolutions to common organizational mistakes: big announcements, ambiti...
Nick Saban calls it “the dumbest decision I ever made” — a fourth-and-one call from the 2001 SEC Championship Game that still sticks with him.
In this episode, Mark Graban breaks down why even the greatest coaches make mistakes, what Saban learned from the moment, and how leaders can turn high-pressure missteps into opportunities for trust and growth.
Perfect for listeners interested in leadership, football, coaching, and the psy...
Jingle Bells is one of the most recognizable Christmas songs ever written… except it wasn’t written for Christmas at all. In this week’s Mistake of the Week, we unpack one of America’s most enduring cultural misconceptions: the belief that Jingle Bells has anything to do with Christmas.
Originally titled One Horse Open Sleigh, the song debuted at a Thanksgiving church service in the 1850s and was inspired not by Santa or reindeer, ...
In Episode #332 of My Favorite Mistake, Mark Graban talks with Dr. Josh McConkey — emergency physician, Air Force Reserve Commander, combat-deployed medevac leader, and Pulitzer Prize–nominated author. Known as the “MacGyver Doc,” Josh has spent his career solving problems in high-pressure environments where you rarely get a second chance.
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Josh shares the most painful mistake of ...
A 32-year-old woman in Switzerland underwent an unnecessary surgery after her lab sample was mixed up at Basel University Hospital. Doctors believed she had cervical cancer. She didn’t — but the procedure went ahead anyway, potentially affecting her ability to carry a pregnancy in the future.
In this Mistake of the Week, Mark Graban unpacks how such devastating but preventable errors happen — and why “being careful” isn’t a real sa...
My guest for Episode #331 of My Favorite Mistake is Andy Regal, a longtime media executive whose career has included leadership roles at The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, Consumer Reports, Court TV, and CBS College Sports. He is also the author of the forthcoming book, “Surviving Bully Culture: A Career Spent Navigating Workplace Bullying and a Guide for Healing.”
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Andy shares a remarkable...
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