My Favorite Mistake: Learning Without Blame in Business and Leadership

Publishing strategist Wiebke Tasch had built a bestselling book and a comfortable full-time income on Amazon -- enough to quit her PR job. Then one morning an automated email told her she had violated Amazon's terms, and both of her accounts and all of her books were deleted. No warning, no explanation, no human to appeal to. Her mistake: she had opened two accounts, one for a pen name and one und...

To save a few thousand dollars in legal fees, six-time Silicon Valley CEO Mike Grossman decided to act as his own lawyer on a routine distribution contract. Years later, when Dun & Bradstreet moved to acquire his company, he reread that contract and realized a single ambiguous sentence could be read to block any sale without his competitor's permission. His board told him not to worry. His men...

Kate Lowry was fresh out of college and working at McKinsey when she saw a colleague do something she believed was seriously wrong -- something that could constitute blackmail, with another employee's ability to stay in the country hanging in the balance. Her instinct was immediate and absolute: this is wrong, and I'm going to tell everyone. She reported it and criticized the person sharply in rev...

Eric Ries had a 40-page business plan. An Excel model so complicated it would crash Excel. A team of elite students, real investors, and a working product. What he didn't have was a strategy -- and he didn't realize it until after the startup collapsed. Episode page with video, links, and more The moment of clarity came in a Boston job interview. A panel of consultants asked what he'd learned. He...

Joe Hennes runs Tough Pigs, the premier Muppet fan site, and for years he also worked at Sesame Workshop -- the dream company he had been writing about since 2006. In this conversation, Joe is unusually candid about what it actually costs to merge fandom and profession. Episode page with video, links, and more: http://markgraban.com/mistake352 He explains why he kept his Sesame job quiet, what cha...

Deborah Coviello has spent her career walking into businesses with quality crises and operational pressure, and walking out with stronger leaders behind her. In this conversation with Mark Graban, she shares the favorite mistake that taught her one of her most lasting lessons. Episode page with links and more At a global leadership meeting, Deb presented her plan to turn around the worst-performin...

Jesse Jackson, contact center leader and host of Set Lusting Bruce, joins Mark Graban to share his favorite mistake: going gun-shy as a new leader when veterans push back with "we tried that, it didn't work." Jesse explains why that deference cost him his best ideas, and how a Harry Chapin story about "two kinds of tired" reshaped the way he leads. Episode page with video, links, and more We get i...

Dr. Melisa Buie is an operational excellence leader and co-author of Faceplant: FREE Yourself from Failure's Funk. She has a PhD in nuclear engineering from the University of Michigan, taught graduate engineering courses at San Jose State University, and has worked at semiconductor and photonics companies including Lam Research, Coherent, and Applied Materials. She is also the author of Problem So...

At 24 years old, Joel Steele was buried in what would be roughly $800,000 of debt in today's dollars - the wreckage of a healthy fast food restaurant chain he had poured himself into since college. He had three locations, media coverage, and a fourth lease in his hand. What he didn't have was a team, a mentor, or a profit. Episode page with links, video, and more In this conversation with Mark Gra...

Irna Hutabarat Athans had an MBA from MIT, connections to VCs, and a front-row seat to the startup world. But technology felt soulless to her, so she walked away -- for years. She became a tango dancer, a poet, a world traveler. Anything but tech. Episode page with links, video, and more That decision cost her years of income and impact. The turning point came at a conference where she asked a roo...

Andy Freed has seen Bruce Springsteen perform 95 times. Somewhere along the way, he stopped just enjoying the shows and started studying them -- how Springsteen prepares a set list, reads an audience, paces energy across a four-hour performance, and makes every musician on stage feel like the most important person in the room. Episode page with links, video, and more  Andy is CEO of Virtual Inc. a...

Dr. Julia Garcia -- psychologist, author, and host of The Journey with Dr. J -- built two businesses that didn't survive. Episode page with links, video, and more The first was a performing arts collective that grew to 20 people before the economics collapsed. The second was a mental health app for young girls experiencing harassment on social media -- grant-funded, scrappy, and gaining real tract...

Mike Chaput bought his first company at 24, went bankrupt at 28, and started over. When he co-founded Endsight, he and his partners worked hard to establish company values -- and landed on one that sounded great: "Have a sense of humor and take enjoyment from the day." The problem? Elevating humor to the top of the values hierarchy gave permission for blame-based behaviors, including a rubber chic...

Kendall Berg was the most productive person on every team she joined. She was so technically good at her job that she thought she didn't have to be nice. Then a VP she respected -- someone outside her chain of command -- pulled her aside and delivered six words that changed her career: "Nobody likes working with you." Episode page with links, video, and more That blunt feedback could have been a s...

Patrick Engasser spent two years ranked near the bottom of a 615-person sales organization -- broke, in debt, and grinding through trial and error -- before one decision changed everything. He hired a coach. The problem wasn't effort or talent. It was not knowing that was even an option. Episode page with links and more In this episode, Patrick shares the mindset shift that had to happen before an...

Dr. Jen Fry's favorite mistake is a disagreement with her best friend of over ten years -- a small miscommunication that led to eight months of silence. Neither of them knew how to reconcile it. Then Jen's mother passed away, and her friend sent a card. That single act of reaching out changed how Jen thinks about conflict, reconciliation, and the kind of people worth keeping in her life. Episode p...

Baseball has always made room for human error. Umpires miss calls. Fans complain. Life goes on. But this season, MLB is rolling out the Automated Ball-Strike challenge system -- ABS -- giving teams two challenges per game to contest ball-and-strike calls. The idea is to reduce bad calls. The likely side effect is a whole new category of mistakes. In this " Mistake of the Week ," Mark Graban looks...

In this episode of My Favorite Mistake, Mark Graban talks with Dr. Tyler B. Evans, infectious diseases and addiction medicine physician, public health leader, and author of Pandemics, Poverty, and Politics. Episode page with links, video, and more Dr. Evans shares a deeply personal “mistake” — giving up his dream of working in global health abroad to take what he thought was a conventional job in...

A forgotten water heater tap led to an overnight leak, an unexpected ice rink, and a reminder that the real lesson isn’t about blame — it’s about designing systems that catch small mistakes before they spread. A small, human slip led to a big, icy problem in a neighborhood in northwest China. After a woman forgot to turn off the tap on her solar water heater, water flowed unnoticed for nine hours...

In Episode 339 of My Favorite Mistake, Mark Graban talks with Genevieve Skory, executive coach and former Chief Field Development Officer, about a leadership mistake that many high performers make: confusing performance with alignment. Episode page with links, video, and more For years, Genevieve defined winning by revenue and results. Pressure was normal. Constant pivoting felt strategic. Intensi...

After winning gold at the Winter Olympics, skier Breezy Johnson did what champions do — she jumped for joy. And her medal fell off. She later joked, “Don’t jump in them… I was jumping in excitement and it broke,” adding that it was “not, like, crazy broken. But, a little broken.” Other athletes experienced similar ribbon failures during their celebrations. In this episode of Mistake of the Week, M...

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...

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 rus...

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 runn...

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 mome...