The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation

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. That pattern is hard to see from an office or a boardroom, which is part of why it lasts for years.

THE MISTAKES THAT MAKE US is Mark Graban's practical guide to changing it. Drawing on 200-plus conversations from his My Favorite Mistake podcast, with CEOs, founders, clinicians, engineers, and frontline leaders, he kept finding the same pattern across every industry. The organizations that improve fastest are the ones where a person can say "I messed up" and get help instead of blame.

You'll read about a Toyota executive who wasn't fired for ruining the paint on 100 cars, a distiller who over-aged 100 barrels of expensive whiskey, a member of Congress who lost his first primary, and leaders in hospitals, software, and startups who turned specific missteps into lasting improvements.

Inside, you'll learn how to:

• Make it safe to admit mistakes, starting with your own
• Prevent errors through better process design and mistake-proofing, borrowed from the Toyota Production System
• Build psychological safety as a daily practice instead of a poster on the wall
• Respond to problems with improvement rather than punishment
• Use checklists and other methods that people actually follow
• Run small experiments so you can fail cheaply and learn quickly
• Keep the culture alive after the initial enthusiasm fades

You can't punish your way to perfection.

If your people aren't surfacing problems, they aren't hiding them out of laziness. They're responding sensibly to a system that has taught them what honesty costs. This book is about changing that system, and it starts with how you react to the next mistake that lands on your desk.

For leaders in healthcare, manufacturing, software, and anywhere people have learned to keep their heads down.

"A book about errors, flubs, and screwups that pushes beyond platitudes and actually shows how to enlist our mistakes as engines of learning, growth, and progress."
-- Daniel H. Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author of DRIVE and THE POWER OF REGRET

"Hiding mistakes is the death of continuous improvement. Mark uses stories to delve deeply into the disease and gives us powerful suggestions for creating an environment that breeds trust and high performance."
-- Jeffrey Liker, author of THE TOYOTA WAY

"A brilliant treatment of this topic that helps us frame mistakes properly, detach them from fear, and see them as expectations, not exceptions."
-- Timothy R. Clark, PhD, author of THE 4 STAGES OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark Graban is a consultant, speaker, and three-time Shingo Publication Award recipient, for LEAN HOSPITALS, HEALTHCARE KAIZEN, and THE MISTAKES THAT MAKE US. He hosts the My Favorite Mistake and Lean Blog Interviews podcasts and has worked with hospitals, manufacturers, and technology companies worldwide. He holds an industrial engineering degree from Northwestern and an MS and an MBA from MIT. His work rests on one idea: improving the system beats blaming the individual.

 
Mark Graban has helped organizations improve for more than twenty-five years, in settings including manufacturing, healthcare, and software companies.
 
He previously wrote or co-authored Lean Hospitals, Healthcare Kaizen, Practicing Lean, and, most recently, Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More.
 
Working independently as a professional speaker and consultant, Mark is also a senior advisor to the technology company KaiNexus.
 
He hosts multiple podcasts, including Lean Blog Interviews (started in 2006) and My Favorite Mistake (2020). Mark earned a BS in Industrial Engineering from Northwestern University and both an MS in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA from the MIT Sloan Leaders for Global Operations program. He and his wife, Amy, live wherever her career takes her.