Learning from mistakes is not optional in healthcare–it's essential for patient safety, staff engagement, and long-term performance. For years, I've written and spoken about how Lean leadership and Kaizen cultures treat mistakes not as failures to hide, but as signals to learn from and improve. That perspective runs through Lean Hospitals to The Mistakes That Make Us. The challenge isn't agreeing that mistakes happen–it's building systems and leadership behaviors that surface them quickly, address them effectively, and turn them into lasting improvements.
What Lean Hospitals Teaches About Mistakes
At the heart of Lean healthcare is a leadership choice: whether mistakes trigger fear and blame–or learning and improvement. In Lean Hospitals, I put it this way:
“Mistakes are a reality in healthcare, and while we strive to prevent them, it's crucial to create an environment where they are identified quickly, addressed effectively, and used as opportunities for learning and improvement.”
Leadership's Role in Turning Mistakes into Learning
As I explored further in The Executive Guide to Healthcare Kaizen, the difference between a stagnant organization and a learning one often comes down to leadership behavior:
“Leadership in a Kaizen culture means creating an environment where mistakes are seen as opportunities to learn, not as failures.”
Why This Is Hard — and Why It Matters
These excerpts point to a truth I've seen again and again: it's easy to say we should learn from mistakes, but much harder to live that out consistently. Creating a culture where mistakes are openly discussed and learned from isn't a “nice-to-have.” It's essential to patient safety and organizational improvement.
In practice, this often feels like an uphill battle. Resistance isn't always loud or obvious. More often, it shows up as silence, defensiveness, or systems that quietly punish people for speaking up. That can be frustrating–but it's also exactly why this work matters, and why I keep writing, speaking, and coaching on these topics.
What Encourages Me to Keep Going
At the same time, I'm genuinely thankful for the leaders and organizations who don't just agree with these ideas in principle–but act on them.
These are leaders who go beyond slogans and lip service. They lead with humility. They create space for learning. They understand that mistakes are inevitable, but learning from them is a choice. And that choice leads to better outcomes, safer environments, and more resilient organizations.
Those examples are proof that this isn't theoretical. It's possible–and it works.
Leadership Is the Difference
One of the biggest challenges in this journey is helping organizations move beyond fear. It's easy to say “we should learn from mistakes.” It's much harder to create conditions where people actually feel safe enough to do so.
This is where leadership makes all the difference.
Leaders who model vulnerability and candor–who admit their own mistakes and talk openly about what they learned–send a powerful signal. When leaders respond with curiosity instead of blame, they create the conditions for real learning and continuous improvement.
From Blame to Learning
I often say that mistakes are only failures if we fail to learn from them.
In a Lean environment, every mistake is an opportunity to ask better questions:
- What went wrong?
- Why did it seem to make sense at the time?
- What did we learn?
- How can we improve the system so this is less likely to happen again?
That shift–from blame to problem-solving, from fear to curiosity–is at the heart of Lean thinking.
What the Best Organizations Do Differently
Over the years, one pattern has become clear to me: the most successful organizations aren't the ones that make the fewest mistakes. They're the ones that learn the most from the mistakes they do make.
That's the standard worth aiming for.
When mistakes are treated as information instead of infractions, learning accelerates. Improvement becomes continuous. And people bring more of their judgment, creativity, and care to their work.
That's the kind of culture worth building–and worth sustaining.
If you’re working to build a culture where people feel safe to speak up, solve problems, and improve every day, I’d be glad to help. Let’s talk about how to strengthen Psychological Safety and Continuous Improvement in your organization.
