The Mistakes That Make Us

2025 Shingo Publication Award Recipient

Somewhere in your organization this week, someone made a mistake and told no one. Not because they're dishonest -- because they learned it wasn't safe.

That silence has a cost. The error repeats. The process stays broken. The next person hides the same mistake the same way. This is how cultures of fear quietly compound into cultures of mediocrity -- and most leaders never see it happening.

The Mistakes That Make Us is about breaking that pattern.

Mark Graban draws on more than 200 conversations from his My Favorite Mistake podcast -- with CEOs, founders, clinicians, and frontline leaders -- and reveals a consistent truth: the organizations that improve fastest aren't the ones that avoid mistakes. They're the ones that make it safe to admit them, study them, and fix the systems that caused them.

This isn't a book of theory or inspiration posters about "embracing failure." It's a practical guide to the leadership behaviors, habits, and systems that actually shift a culture from blame to learning. You'll see how leaders at Toyota, in healthcare, in software, and in startups turned specific missteps into structural improvements -- and how to do the same with your team, starting now.

If your people aren't surfacing problems, they aren't hiding them out of laziness. They're responding rationally to a system that punishes honesty. This book shows you how to change that system.

Mark Graban is the author of the Shingo Award-winning Lean Hospitals and Healthcare Kaizen, and the creator of the My Favorite Mistake podcast. His work is grounded in Lean thinking, respect for people, and the principle that improving the system matters more than blaming the individual.