TL;DR: Mistakes don’t define organizations—how leaders respond to them does.
The Mistakes That Make Us explores how individuals, teams, and organizations can learn from errors instead of hiding them, blaming people, or repeating the same failures. This archive brings together posts, podcast episodes, giveaways, translations, and events connected to the book The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation.
Across industries including healthcare, manufacturing, aviation, and technology, these posts examine psychological safety, leadership behavior, system design, and the conditions that make learning possible. The focus is not on avoiding mistakes at all costs—but on responding to them in ways that build trust, capability, and continuous improvement.
For leaders, this collection reinforces a simple truth: mistakes are inevitable, but learning is a choice.
I’ve played around with ChatGPT before (including in a few blog posts), but the advancements in A.I. technologies are pretty breathtaking. I recently tried out the new “Notebook LM” tool from Google. I uploaded a PDF of my latest book,…
When discussing mistakes, it’s common to hear terms like “stupid mistake” or “dumb mistake” thrown around, especially when reflecting on our own errors. However, labeling mistakes in this way is unproductive. In The Mistakes That Make Us, one of the…
tl;dr: Kindness in leadership isn’t about being nice or avoiding mistakes. It’s about responding to mistakes in ways that help people learn, grow, and improve–starting with how we treat ourselves. Today, I want to share a section from my book,…
Here’s a great opportunity for you to win TWO fantastic books–one for you and one for a young reader in your life! For the adults: You could win a signed copy of my latest book, The Mistakes That Make Us:…
In writing The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation, I wanted to challenge the way we think about mistakes, leadership, and organizational culture. Throughout my career, I’ve seen firsthand how the traditional responses to mistakes–punishment,…
Thanks to a collaboration with the Leanpub team, AI-translated versions of my book The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation will be available in many languages, including Portuguese for the Brazil market (and I’m traveling…
TL;DR: Most organizations are running on a fraction of the intelligence they’re actually paying for. The people who know what’s going wrong often don’t say so. That’s not a personality problem — it’s a design problem. This post draws upon…
My latest book, The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation, has turned one year old! Join me and my co-host, Elisabeth Swan, for what we hope will be an engaging, insightful, and fun discussion about…
This post is built around excerpts from the book The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation. Read more about Toyota, including stories and key lessons learned in the book. Download a free preview of the book…
This post is built around excerpts from the book The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation. Read more about Toyota, including stories and key lessons learned in the book. Download a free preview Today, we explore…
The book giveaway contest that I’m running ends Friday at about 3 pm ET. ENTER TO WIN a set of all six books that I’ve written or co-authored over the past 15 years. I made a mistake today in my…
Hooray! Thanks to the team at Goody PR for honoring my latest book, The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation, in their 2023 Goody Business Book Awards as: As Liz Kelly Goody, founder of Goody…
