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