My Favorite Mistake: Learning Without Blame in Business and Leadership
Mark Graban
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
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
Episodes
Mentioned books
Feb 9, 2026 • 43min
I Made a Marine Cry: Leadership, Authority, and Learning from Mistakes | Olaolu Ogunyemi
What happens when a leader realizes their approach caused real harm?
In this episode of My Favorite Mistake, U.S. Marine Corps officer and leadership mentor Olaolu Ogunyemi shares a defining moment early in his career—recognizing that his leadership style, while well-intended, crossed a line and made a Marine cry.
Episode page with links, video, and more
Rather than defending his authority, Olaolu reflects on the gap between intent and impact, and how that moment forced him to rethink what effective leadership really looks like. We talk about learning from mistakes, the difference between fear-based compliance and true accountability, and why psychological safety is essential—even (and especially) in high-pressure environments like the military.
This conversation explores how leaders grow when they confront mistakes honestly, respond with humility, and commit to changing their behavior—not just their words.
Feb 5, 2026 • 5min
When Diesel Ends Up Where It Shouldn’t — Mistake of the Week:
Most of us pull up to a gas pump on autopilot—until something goes wrong.
In this Mistake of the Week, host Mark Graban looks at a real-world systems failure that affected hundreds of drivers across the Denver metro area. Due to an upstream error at a fuel terminal, diesel fuel was mistakenly delivered into the gasoline supply—leading to stalled cars, tow trucks, and costly repairs.
Instead of rushing to blame or punishment, Colorado regulators emphasized learning, investigation, and prevention. That response matters—and it offers an important lesson about mistake-proofing, system design, and leadership.
In this episode, Mark explores:
Why focusing on who made the mistake misses the real problem
How mistake-proofing works—and where it often fails
Why downstream safeguards can’t fix upstream system errors
What leaders can learn from choosing curiosity over blame
Mistakes like this are disruptive and expensive—but they also create an opportunity to improve systems so the same error doesn’t happen again.
Feb 2, 2026 • 46min
Ray Zinn: Why Repeating the Same Mistake Is the Real Failure in Leadership
Ray Zinn—longtime CEO of Micrel Semiconductor and the longest-serving CEO of a publicly traded company in Silicon Valley history—doesn’t believe the real problem is making mistakes.
He believes the real failure is repeating the same mistake without fixing it.
Episode page with links, video, and more
In this episode of My Favorite Mistake, Ray shares leadership lessons from nearly four decades running Micrel, including why popular slogans like “fail fast, fail often” can actually normalize bad habits, how leaders unintentionally punish learning, and what it takes to build a culture focused on honesty, accountability, and fast problem-solving instead of blame.
Ray also reflects on how losing his eyesight in his late 50s fundamentally changed the way he led—forcing him to listen more deeply, trust others more fully, and become a more empathetic leader. Those experiences shaped his approach to leadership and his latest book, The Essential Leader.
If you care about learning from mistakes, building strong cultures, and leading without fear or ego, this conversation will challenge—and sharpen—your thinking.
Jan 25, 2026 • 39min
Undercharging for Consulting: Amy Rasdal on Fear, Pricing, and Knowing Your Worth
What happens when you know your value—but say a lower number anyway?
In this episode of My Favorite Mistake, Mark Graban is joined by Amy Rasdal, founder of Billable at the Beach and author of Land a Consulting Project Now. Amy shares her favorite mistake from the early days of consulting: undercharging for her work because of fear, even when she knew she was worth more.
Amy explains how that moment became a “gateway mistake,” leading her to better understand pricing, confidence, and the hidden beliefs that hold many accomplished professionals back. The conversation explores why undercharging is so common, how fear shows up in pricing conversations, and why selling out your time at a discount can quietly limit long-term success.
This episode is especially relevant for consultants, freelancers, and professionals considering a move from corporate life into independent work.
🔗 Full show notes: https://www.markgraban.com/mistake336
Jan 22, 2026 • 6min
Releasing the Wrong Body Is Not Just “Human Error” - Mistake of the Week
A devastating hospital mistake in Glasgow was described by leaders as “human error,” even as they acknowledged that “very rigorous processes” were not followed.
In this episode of The Mistake of the Week, Mark Graban examines why suspensions and discipline don’t guarantee improvement — and how gaps between written procedures and real work create hidden risk.
Punishment may feel like accountability, but without fixing the system, the same harm remains possible.
Jan 19, 2026 • 45min
How Buying an Oil Tanker Became My Favorite Mistake — Kevin Hipes
What happens when a business deal looks solid on paper—but falls apart in real life?
Episode page with video, links, and more
My guest for Episode #335 of the My Favorite Mistake podcast is Kevin Hipes, an entrepreneur, author, and former city commissioner who’s been called the “New York Forrest Gump” because of the many lives he’s lived.
Kevin shares the story of one of his biggest—and most unforgettable—business mistakes: buying an oil tanker in the Caribbean. What began as a seemingly foolproof investment with a strong pro forma turned into a cascade of unexpected challenges, including regulatory changes, ethical dilemmas, geopolitical risk, and international drama.
In this episode, we talk about:
Why smart people still make big business mistakes
How external forces can derail even the best plans
Learning from failure instead of hiding from it
Resilience after financial and emotional setbacks
The importance of mental health awareness for leaders and entrepreneurs
Kevin’s story is funny, sobering, and deeply human—and a powerful reminder that mistakes don’t define us unless we refuse to learn from them.
Jan 15, 2026 • 6min
“But I Wore the Juice”: The True Story That Inspired the Dunning–Kruger Effect | Mistake of the Week
What does a failed bank robbery have to do with one of the most cited ideas in psychology?
More than you might expect.
In this episode of My Favorite Mistake, Mark Graban tells the true story of McArthur Wheeler, a man who believed that rubbing lemon juice on his face would make him invisible to security cameras. Confident in his reasoning—and even more confident in his ability to test it—Wheeler walked into two Pittsburgh banks in broad daylight, fully exposed, certain that his citrus-based logic would protect him.
It didn’t.
When police later showed him clear surveillance photos, Wheeler’s stunned response became legendary: “But I wore the juice.”
That moment caught the attention of psychologist David Dunning, who saw in Wheeler’s mistake something deeper than criminal incompetence. Along with Justin Kruger, Dunning went on to study how people with low skill often lack the awareness to recognize their own limitations—research that became known as the Dunning–Kruger Effect.
This episode explores the layered nature of mistakes: flawed assumptions, poorly designed tests, and the dangerous certainty that both are correct. It’s not a story about stupidity. It’s a story about human blind spots—and how easily confidence can outrun competence.
Whether in leadership, work, or everyday life, the lesson is universal: it’s not enough to test our ideas. We also have to test how we test them.
Because some of the most convincing mistakes are the ones that feel like proof.
Jan 12, 2026 • 40min
Choosing Engineering When I Was Wired for People (Angie Callen)
Episode Page
Angie Callen — founder of Career Bend, host of No More Mondays, and author of Scary Good: Discovering Life Beyond the Sunday Scaries — shares why choosing engineering school became her favorite mistake.
In this episode, Angie reflects on becoming an engineer despite being deeply people-oriented, how that decision shaped her thinking, and why mistakes that “don’t fit” often unlock clarity, confidence, and unexpected opportunity.
Mark and Angie discuss career transitions, Sunday Scaries, confidence built through action (not perfection), the difference between empathy and compassion, and why so many high performers stay stuck in roles that no longer align with who they are.
This conversation explores how mistakes can become catalysts — not failures — and why meaningful work starts with understanding yourself, not following default paths.
Jan 8, 2026 • 4min
The HR Tool That Accidentally Fired Everyone - Mistake of the Week
In this week’s Mistake of the Week, a company’s HR team accidentally sent a mass termination email to the entire workforce — including the CEO. The culprit was an offboarding automation tool left in the wrong mode, turning a routine test into a company-wide panic.
Mark Graban explores what this moment teaches about automation, human fallibility, and the danger of relying on memory in systems that affect people’s livelihoods. Instead of asking, “Who pressed the wrong button?”, the real question is, “Why was this mistake even possible?”
A funny story now, but a real lesson in error-proofing or the lack thereof.
Because even when no one’s actually fired, the fear can linger long after the email is retracted.
Jan 5, 2026 • 47min
Startup Mistakes That Linger: Jason Sherman on Co-Founders, Smart Money, and MVP Learning
In this episode of My Favorite Mistake, Mark Graban talks with Jason Sherman, an entrepreneur, startup advisor, and educator, about the early startup mistakes that quietly shape everything that follows.
Episode page with transcript, video, and more
Jason shares hard-earned lessons about choosing co-founders, distinguishing “smart money” from money alone, and why MVPs should accelerate learning rather than encourage overbuilding. The conversation explores judgment, incentives, and alignment through a Lean lens — showing how optimism, unchecked assumptions, and unclear decision rights can undermine even strong ideas.
This episode is especially relevant for founders, leaders, and anyone working under uncertainty who wants to turn mistakes into insight instead of regret.
