My Favorite Mistake: Learning Without Blame in Business and Leadership
My Favorite Mistake is a podcast about learning without blame in business and leadership.
Despite the name, it’s not just my favorite mistake—it’s yours, it’s ours, and it’s what we can all learn from when things don’t go as planned.
Hosted by author and consultant Mark Graban, each episode features honest conversations with leaders, executives, entrepreneurs, and changemakers about a meaningful mistake they made—and what they learned after things went wrong. How they responded. How they improved. How they grew as leaders.
This isn’t a show about failure theater, gotcha moments, or simplistic “lessons learned.” It’s about how real people reflect, improve, and lead better in complex organizations—without scapegoating, shame, or hindsight bias.
What You’ll Hear
• Leadership and management mistakes that reshaped careers, teams, and organizations
• How teams and leaders learn without blaming individuals
• Insights about culture, systems, decision-making, and psychological safety
• Practical lessons drawn from real experience, not abstract theory
Guests come from business, healthcare, technology, sports, entertainment, government, and academia, sharing stories that reveal how learning actually happens.
The Perspective
Mark brings a systems-thinking lens grounded in Lean management, continuous improvement, and psychological safety. The focus is less on who messed up and more on what the system taught us.
Who This Podcast Is For
• Leaders and managers who want to learn from mistakes without blame
• Executives working to build healthier, more resilient cultures
• Professionals who believe improvement starts with reflection, not punishment
My Favorite Mistake: Learning Without Blame in Business and Leadership
Listen on:
Episodes
Tuesday Sep 08, 2020
Tuesday Sep 08, 2020
Republican Representative from Texas
Show notes: https://www.markgraban.com/mistake2
My guest for Episode #2 is not currently a business leader, but he is going back into the private sector in January 2021. He is Congressman Will Hurd, a Republican representing Texas’s 23rd Congressional District.
Hurd was student body president at Texas A&M University, he served as a CIA undercover operations officer including stints in the field in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. After working for a cybersecurity company, he was elected to the House in 2014.
Today, the Congressman talks about his “favorite mistake,” which includes his lessons learned from running and losing his first election in a runoff. We'll also hear about his experiences in the CIA and how they focus on training — and executing the mundane tasks perfectly — as a way to prevent bigger, catastrophic mistakes.
Update March 2022: Hurd is now the author of the book American Reboot: An Idealist's Guide to Getting Big Things Done.
Thanks for listening -- please subscribe, rate, and review. You can support the podcast: https://anchor.fm/favorite-mistake/support
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Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/favorite-mistake/support
Wednesday Sep 02, 2020
Wednesday Sep 02, 2020
Kevin Harrington from "Shark Tank," Mark Timm from many entrepreneurial ventures, co-authors
Episode web page: http://www.markgraban.com/mistake1
I'm really excited that my guests for the inaugural episode of the “My Favorite Mistake” podcast are Kevin Harrington and Mark Timm, co-authors of the new book Mentor to Millions: Secrets of Success in Business, Relationships, and Beyond.
You probably know Kevin as one of the original “sharks” on the hit TV program “Shark Tank.” He's the creator of the infomercial, pioneer of the “As Seen on TV industry,” and co-founding board member of the Entrepreneur’s Organization (EO), founded in 1987.
Mark Timm has been a serial entrepreneur and exponential-thinking practitioner for almost three decades. He has started more than a dozen companies, several of which have multiplied and been sold. He has spoken professionally for more than 25 years, giving thousands of speeches to over a million people around the globe.
In today's episode, they both open up about their “favorite mistake” and what they learned from that. They'll also share stories about Kevin mentoring Mark and others and some common mistakes that can be made in a mentoring relationship.
If you're interested in the book, be sure to check out their website. I am also running a giveaway contest, via my blog, where you can enter to win one of two copies of the book.
At the end of the episode, Mark and Kevin share a special offer related to some extra materials that you can get, for free, when you buy the book.
Please subscribe, rate, and review the podcast -- that helps others find this content and you'll be sure to get future episodes as they are released weekly. Support the podcast: https://anchor.fm/favorite-mistake/support.
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Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/favorite-mistake/support
Monday Aug 10, 2020
Monday Aug 10, 2020
http://myfavoritemistakepodcast.com/
I hope you'll enjoy listening to My Favorite Mistake, published weekly. Please subscribe, rate, and review!
And please check out my new book, The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation.
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Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/favorite-mistake/support
About Mark Graban
Mark Graban is an author, speaker, and consultant, whose latest book, The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation, is available now.
He is also the author of the award-winning book Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Engagement and others, including Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More.
He serves as a consultant through his company, Constancy, Inc, and is also a Senior Advisor for the technology company KaiNexus.
Mark hosts podcasts, including “Lean Blog Interviews” and “My Favorite Mistake.”
Education: B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Northwestern University; M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, and M.B.A. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Leaders for Global Operations Program.