Mistakes are inevitable—but how leaders and organizations respond to them determines whether they improve or repeat the same failures. These posts explore mistakes through a Lean lens: system design vs. “human error,” psychological safety, learning cultures, and leadership behaviors that turn errors into improvement rather than blame.
Drawing from healthcare, manufacturing, aviation, sports, and everyday work, this archive focuses less on who failed—and more on what the system made possible.
Mistakes are inevitable; learning is not. These posts align with ideas I expanded on in The Mistakes That Make Us, which examines how leaders, cultures, and systems determine whether errors become liabilities—or catalysts for improvement.
I’ve recently been interviewed on a number of radio stations on the theme of “learning from mistakes,” as a way to promote my podcast series My Favorite Mistake. I’m sharing two of them here, each of which had a slightly…
In Episode 29, it’s been a little while since Mark and Jamie got together for Lean Whiskey. We catch up on what’s new, which includes Mark’s new certification with distinction with the WSET Level 2 Spirits certification, and Jamie’s new…
In this post: What does it look like when leaders publicly own up to mistakes? At Garrison Brothers Distillery, that practice is not theoretical. It is part of their culture. In a recent conversation with founder Dan Garrison and master…
In Episode 28, Mark and Jamie begin by having our spouses pour mystery whiskeys for us. We don’t know what they are when we start drinking them. Mark’s wife at least joins him occasionally in a dram, but Jamie’s wife…
My latest episode of “My Favorite Mistake” is one with a heavy Lean focus, so I’m sharing it here with you today. My guest is Lee Houghton, a consultant based in the UK who has done a lot of Lean…
You might remember this Lean Blog Interviews podcast episode that I did last year with Keith Ingels from The Raymond Corporation, a Toyota Industries company: The theme of learning from mistakes came up, not surprisingly, so I also had Keith…
I saw this press release about the new book by former General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt. Jeff Immelt to Release HOT SEAT: What I Learned Leading a Great American Company The book is available now through Amazon. Immelt had his…
I make a lot of mistakes. Maybe that’s one reason why I started a podcast called “My Favorite Mistake.” I do my best to learn from my mistakes. I’d like to avoid repeating mistakes, but I do find ways to…
Today’s episode of “My Favorite Mistake” is another one that Lean practitioners will especially like. My guest, Sabrina Moon, talks about how she (unfortunately) learned “command and control” management in her early days at General Motors. She talks eloquently about…
Before I get into this post, I want to also point you to another post that I wrote for the Value Capture blog: Salem Health Presentation on Their Covid Vaccination Process and Lean Now, on to the injection mistakes discussion.…
Of the 32 episodes of the “My Favorite Mistake” podcast that I’ve released so far, the episode with Billy Taylor has been the most listened to by far — by a factor of five. Readers of this blog most likely…
The main recurring theme in the “My Favorite Mistake” podcast series is learning from mistakes. I’ve been trying to do more reading on this topic recently. Here’s a 2011 HBR article by Prof. Amy Edmondson: Strategies for Learning from Failure…
