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 Mark Graban's guide to breaking that pattern. Drawing on more than 200 conversations from his My Favorite Mistake podcast, he uncovers a consistent truth: the organizations that improve fastest aren't the ones that avoid mistakes. They're the ones that make it safe to talk about them openly and fix what caused them.
The podcast guests range from CEOs and founders to clinicians and frontline leaders, and the pattern holds across industries. What separates a learning culture from a blaming one isn't luck or personality. It's leadership behavior and system design.
This isn't a book of theory or inspirational posters about "embracing failure." It's a practical guide to the leadership behaviors and working systems that 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. You'll also learn the methods that make that possible: mistake-proofing (poka-yoke) borrowed from the Toyota Production System, checklists that actually get used, psychological safety as a daily practice rather than a slogan, and small experiments that let you fail without catastrophe.
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 rationally to a system that punishes honesty. This book shows you how to change that system, starting with how you respond to the next mistake that lands on your desk.
"... shows how to enlist our mistakes as engines of learning, growth, and progress." -- Daniel H. Pink, author of #1 New York Times bestsellers DRIVE, WHEN, and The Power of Regret
"Making mistakes is not a choice. Learning from them is... This book's ultimate contribution is helping us realize that creating a culture of productive mistake-making accelerates learning, confidence, and success." -- Timothy R. Clark, PhD, author of The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark Graban is the author of the Shingo Research Award-winning Lean Hospitals and Healthcare Kaizen, and the host of the "My Favorite Mistake" podcast. His work draws on Lean management and a simple principle: improving the system is more effective than blaming the individual.
Mark Graban is an internationally recognized consultant, author, speaker, and entrepreneur who helps leaders build cultures of continuous improvement, psychological safety, and people-centered leadership. His work blends Lean management, problem-solving, and statistical methods with a practical focus on engaging employees at every level.He is the author of several influential and Shingo Award-winning books, including Lean Hospitals, Healthcare Kaizen (co-authored with Joseph Swartz), and The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation. He also wrote Measures of Success and edited the anthology Practicing Lean. Across his writing, he emphasizes systems thinking, respect for people, and learning from mistakes as the foundation for lasting improvement.Mark is the founder of LeanBlog.org and host of multiple long-running podcasts, including Lean Blog Interviews and My Favorite Mistake. He has been recognized as a LinkedIn Top Voice for his thought leadership in Lean, culture, and organizational improvement.Since 2010, Mark has worked independently as a consultant and advisor, partnering with executives and teams in healthcare, manufacturing, and technology, and collaborating with consulting groups on larger engagements. He also serves as a Senior Advisor to KaiNexus, a continuous improvement software company, where he holds a small equity stake.Mark holds a BS in Industrial Engineering from Northwestern University, along with an MSME and MBA from MIT as part of the Leaders for Global Operations Program.
