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.
Recently, l’ve been writing some blog posts on my new book’s website — mistakesbook.com I’m still blogging here, but you might find some of these posts interesting (or that’s my mistake for thinking so). Podcasts I’ve also been a guest…
Bottom Line Up Front: I wrote a book about mistakes. That book was published… with some mistakes. Since it’s a book about learning from mistakes, that’s the intent of this post. Initial Reflections: As I’ve hosted a podcast about learning…
Scroll down for how to subscribe, transcript, and more For Episode #480 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast turns the tables, as regular host Mark Graban is interviewed today by a guest host, his friend Paul Critchley. Paul was previously…
TL;DR: Broken coffee mugs turned into a practical lesson about learning from mistakes, system design, kindness, and why fixing root causes matters more than fixing symptoms. Here’s a story I’ve meant to write up for almost two years… some events…
Below is some material that I wrote, but didn’t use, in my book The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation. Maybe it was a mistake to cut it. But the material wasn’t really related to…
I’m happy to announce some special pre-order pricing! Just $2.99! The regular price will be $9.99. My new book is The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation. CLICK HERE –> BUY NOW If you already…
The following is an excerpt from the book The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation. And this post also includes some material that was cut from the book. Get a free preview of the formatted…
My new book, The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation, is still only in a draft state before final proofreading (actually, the proofreading is taking place now). UPDATE — the paperback and hardcover books are…
Thanks as always to Ryan McCormack for this… there’s always so much good reading, listening, and viewing shared here by him! Subscribe to get these directly from Ryan via email. Insights about improvement, innovation, and leadership… Operational Excellence, Improvement, and…
We all make mistakes! But learning from them is what matters. It’s easier to learn and improve when we can view mistakes as being caused by bad systems instead of blaming bad people. For example, I’ve used online scheduling tools…
When I was at KaiNexicon last week, our hotel in Austin had a Starbucks in the lobby. I’m a pretty regular drinker of the Nitro Cold Brew beverage at Starbucks or other coffee shops when I can find it. I…
More than once over a few months, I opened a fresh box of tea and found the tea bags sideways. Not stacked flat the way the dispenser box clearly intends, but rotated a full 90 degrees and standing on end,…
