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
To save a few thousand dollars in legal fees, six-time Silicon Valley CEO Mike Grossman decided to act as his own lawyer on a routine distribution contract. Years later, when Dun & Bradstreet moved to acquire his company, he reread that contract and realized a single ambiguous sentence could be read to block any sale without his competitor's permis...
Kate Lowry was fresh out of college and working at McKinsey when she saw a colleague do something she believed was seriously wrong -- something that could constitute blackmail, with another employee's ability to stay in the country hanging in the balance. Her instinct was immediate and absolute: this is wrong, and I'm going to tell everyone. She report...
Eric Ries had a 40-page business plan. An Excel model so complicated it would crash Excel. A team of elite students, real investors, and a working product. What he didn't have was a strategy -- and he didn't realize it until after the startup collapsed.
Joe Hennes runs Tough Pigs, the premier Muppet fan site, and for years he also worked at Sesame Workshop -- the dream company he had been writing about since 2006. In this conversation, Joe is unusually candid about what it actually costs to merge fandom and profession.
Ep...
Deborah Coviello has spent her career walking into businesses with quality crises and operational pressure, and walking out with stronger leaders behind her. In this conversation with Mark Graban, she shares the favorite mistake that taught her one of her most lasting lessons.
Jesse Jackson, contact center leader and host of Set Lusting Bruce, joins Mark Graban to share his favorite mistake: going gun-shy as a new leader when veterans push back with "we tried that, it didn't work." Jesse explains why that deference cost him his best ideas, and how a Harry Chapin story about "two kinds of tired" reshaped the way he leads.
Dr. Melisa Buie is an operational excellence leader and co-author of Faceplant: FREE Yourself from Failure's Funk. She has a PhD in nuclear engineering from the University of Michigan, taught graduate engineering courses at San Jose State University, and has worked at semiconductor and photonics companies including Lam Research, Coherent, and Applied M...
At 24 years old, Joel Steele was buried in what would be roughly $800,000 of debt in today's dollars - the wreckage of a healthy fast food restaurant chain he had poured himself into since college. He had three locations, media coverage, and a fourth lease in his hand. What he didn't have was a team, a mentor, or a profit.
Irna Hutabarat Athans had an MBA from MIT, connections to VCs, and a front-row seat to the startup world. But technology felt soulless to her, so she walked away -- for years. She became a tango dancer, a poet, a world traveler. Anything but tech.
Andy Freed has seen Bruce Springsteen perform 95 times. Somewhere along the way, he stopped just enjoying the shows and started studying them -- how Springsteen prepares a set list, reads an audience, paces energy across a four-hour performance, and makes every musician on stage feel like the most important person in the room.
Dr. Julia Garcia -- psychologist, author, and host of The Journey with Dr. J -- built two businesses that didn't survive.
Episode page with links, video, and more
The first was a performing ar...
Mike Chaput bought his first company at 24, went bankrupt at 28, and started over. When he co-founded Endsight, he and his partners worked hard to establish company values -- and landed on one that sounded great: "Have a sense of humor and take enjoyment from the day." The problem? Elevating humor to the top of the values hierarchy gave permission for ...
Kendall Berg was the most productive person on every team she joined. She was so technically good at her job that she thought she didn't have to be nice. Then a VP she respected -- someone outside her chain of command -- pulled her aside and delivered six words that changed her career: "Nobody likes working with you."
Patrick Engasser spent two years ranked near the bottom of a 615-person sales organization -- broke, in debt, and grinding through trial and error -- before one decision changed everything. He hired a coach. The problem wasn't effort or talent. It was not knowing that was even an option.
Dr. Jen Fry's favorite mistake is a disagreement with her best friend of over ten years -- a small miscommunication that led to eight months of silence. Neither of them knew how to reconcile it. Then Jen's mother passed away, and her friend sent a card. That single act of reaching out changed how Jen thinks about conflict, reconciliation, and the kind ...
Baseball has always made room for human error. Umpires miss calls. Fans complain. Life goes on.
But this season, MLB is rolling out the Automated Ball-Strike challenge system -- ABS -- giving teams two challenges per game to contest ball-and-strike calls.
The idea is to reduce bad calls. The likely side effect is a whole new category of mistakes.
In this "Mistake of the Week," Mark Graban looks at what happens when correctin...
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.
Episode page with links, video, and more
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.
Episode page with links, video, and more
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...
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