My Favorite Mistake: Learning Without Blame in Business and Leadership Adam Lawrence: Questioning a Leader’s Commitment Was a Mistake
Author of The Wheel of Sustainability
Episode page with transcript, links, and more -- https://www.markgraban.com/mistake41
My guest for Episode #41 is Adam Lawrence, from his firm Process Improvement Partners. He is the author of the new book The Wheel of Sustainability: Engaging and Empowering Teams to Produce Lasting Results. You can also find a longer interview that I did with Adam about the concepts in the book, from April 2020, before he wrote the book.
Adam has over 30 years of experience in process improvement activities, targeted at manufacturing and business processes and he started this company in 2018, based in Lancaster, PA.
Today, Adam tells a story about a mistake that he made over 20 years ago, much earlier in his career. He was sent to a factory to do some improvement work and he wasn't getting much engagement or participation from leaders there. Adam made the mistake of questioning the commitment of the business unit leader, let's call him Carl. Adam reflects on this story and shares his lessons learned.
“So, over the years, Carl and I developed a pretty good working relationship.”