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.
This was a big mistake on the biggest stage for the biggest American sports league. I wouldn’t say it ruined the game, but it was, at minimum, a distraction that the announcers mentioned many times. Between the Super Bowl turf…
I’ve mentioned before that I’m writing a book based on — inspired by — the interviews, stories, and insights from my guests on the My Favorite Mistake podcast. The book isn’t just a collection of transcripts of those stories. That…
A colleague from KaiNexus sent me a photo from his daughter’s third-grade classroom. It’s titled “The Magic of Growth Mindset,” a reference to the concept and the book Mindset by Carol Dweck. The Grade 3 students probably aren’t reading Dweck’s…
TL;DR: Larry Culp’s AME keynote shows that Lean leadership at GE is about how leaders think, learn, and respond to problems–not tools. Katie Anderson and Mark Graban discuss psychological safety, gemba, learning from mistakes, and building culture through daily leadership…
TL;DR: Looking for powerful Toyota quotes? Here are verified quotes from The Toyota Way and Toyota leaders on mistakes, learning, psychological safety, and continuous improvement — plus context on what they really mean. Toyota Quotes on Learning, Mistakes, and Psychological…
This post shares a simple, real example of Lean thinking in action–using small tests of change to learn safely and avoid bigger, more costly mistakes. A Real-World Example of Lean Thinking in Action In the history of our KaiNexus continuous…
My guest for Episode #462 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Professor John Grout, the former dean of the Campbell School of Business at Berry College in Rome, Georgia. He was recently a guest on “My Favorite Mistake” — Episode 186, so I…
TL;DR: The Negroni shows how clear standards make variation visible–and how unnamed variation shuts down learning. The Negroni Sbagliato proves that when mistakes aren’t blamed or hidden, they can become sources of insight, improvement, and even new standards. The Negroni…
I don’t do things like this on purpose just to create illustrations and examples. But last week, as I was writing away on my new book project about learning from mistakes, I make this small mistake, a “slip” as they…
This week’s episode of the My Favorite Mistake podcast has a guest and a conversation that will be very directly relevant to you as a Lean practitioner. I hope you’ll check it out: Within the next month, John is also…
It seems ironic. Maybe this is my fate in life. Or, I’m tempting fate by podcasting, writing (my book project), and presenting so much on the topic of mistakes and learning from mistakes. Learning from mistakes means we first must…
I use the word “mistake” a lot, so I end up typing the word a lot (including as part of the book project that I’m currently working on based on the “My Favorite Mistake” podcast. It’s amazing how often I type…