The Mistakes That Make Us

Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation

De: Mark Graban

Narrado por: Mark Graban

2025 Shingo Publication Award Recipient

What if the mistakes you’ve spent years trying to avoid could become the most reliable engine for learning, innovation, and better leadership?

In The Mistakes That Make Us, bestselling author and consultant Mark Graban brings together lessons from more than 200 conversations on the My Favorite Mistake podcast—stories from CEOs, entrepreneurs, doctors, engineers, artists, and everyday leaders who turned missteps into turning points. Through these relatable and often surprising examples, Graban shows that the real differentiator isn’t whether we make mistakes, but how we respond to them.

With clear guidance and a calm, inviting narration style, Graban explains how to build psychological safety, reduce fear and blame, encourage speaking up, and create systems that prevent errors rather than hide them. You’ll learn how to lead with curiosity instead of judgment, how to transform setbacks into insights, and how to create a culture where people feel safe taking smart risks and improving every day.

Perfect for leaders, teams, and lifelong learners, this audiobook provides practical tools and real stories that will change the way you think about mistakes—and the way your organization responds to them.

Start listening today and discover how mistakes, handled well, can become your strongest competitive advantage.

©2023 Constancy, Inc. and Mark Graban (P)2023 Constancy, Inc. and Mark Graban

Graban has done it again

Graban has taken an uncomfortable topic and examined it in a fresh nonjudgmental way. He has weaved some of the most important l themes of business today, process improvement, psychological safety, growth mindset (to name a few), via the understanding, accepting, and ultimately improving from mistakes. We all make mistakes. What we do with them defines who we will become.Worthwhile and easy read.

Mistakes, Psychological Safety, and Improvement

This is an inspiring book about mistakes. It isn't just stories from the mistakes podcasts that the author produces, but more importantly it is about why people make mistakes, and the culture necessary to turn those mistakes into learning and improvement opportunities. This can only happen in the right kind of culture, and the book explores how to build that culture. I highly recommend it.

A must-read book for all MBA students

My biggest mistake was not reading this book sooner!

The author has tapped into a cultural problem that I have encountered multiples times in Corporate America. Most organizations avoid acknowledging and learning from mistakes. In this book, Graban drills down on the numerous benefits that can be realized when we take the time to learn from our mistakes in a positive way. I really appreciate his emphasis on the need to cultivate the right culture. I think all manager and future managers should read this book.

Not just insights from podcast guests

I’ve listened to most of the My Favorite Mistake podcast episodes, and thought this would be key highlights from the show. But I was pleasantly surprised that it included much more than that, such as history on mistakes and error proofing, keys to cultivating a culture of psychological safety, Mark’s personal and work examples of mistakes, as well as key insights from his guests. I can’t think of anyone that would not benefit from hearing this book.

A message business leaders need to embody

Mark outlines so many of the key aspects of psychological safety and applies them to multiple industries. This book is applicable to anyone who leads anyone else and is working towards building a robust and fun and effective workforce.