My Favorite Mistake: Learning Without Blame in Business and Leadership

Hosted by Mark Graban

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408

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Aug 2026

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About the show

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

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August 17, 2026Episode 36242 min

Why the Cheapest Supplier Is Rarely the Cheapest, with Carl Pradelli, CEO of Nature City

Carl Pradelli was 18 months into building a co-branded skincare line with the Home Shopping Network when the first production run came back wrong. Ingredients specified at five percent had gone in at one. Ingredients specified at one had gone in at five. The same women who had praised the samples now reported the product was making things worse. Learn more at https://www.markgraban.com/mistake362 The contract manufacturer had come recommended by an acquaintance of one of Carl's partners. He had visited the facility and found real credentials -- FDA certifications, inspections, everything he expected. What he had not done was his own due diligence on a decision capable of making or breaking the business. When he brought the batch records back, the manufacturer did not offer to remake the product. They argued it was not as bad as he thought. Then their accounting department called about payment. Carl is co-founder and CEO of Nature City, the direct-to-consumer supplements company he and his wife Beth started in 2002. He spent 12 years in investment banking and private equity before that. In this episode he explains why he has used the same manufacturer for more than 20 years instead of quoting every job to three vendors, why the dime you save per bottle evaporates the moment something goes wrong, and where quality failures enter a supply chain at the supplier, manufacturer, and brand owner levels. He also shares how he handles it when someone on his own team makes a mistake -- and why hiding one is the only version that worries him.

August 10, 2026Episode 36139 min

Nurse Tiffany Auvil on Caregiving, Denials, and a Misdiagnosis

Tiffany Auvil spent more than twenty years inside the U.S. healthcare system, starting as a volunteer firefighter and eventually serving as System Director of Outpatient Clinics for a three-hospital health system. She is a functional medicine health coach, she is completing a Doctorate of Science in Integrative Healthcare, and she is the author of "The No BS Guide for Caregivers: How to Survive the Healthcare Maze," available now. Episode page with links and more Her favorite mistake was trusting the system she had worked inside for two decades. Her husband Dave was treated for renal cell carcinoma in 2016 and was cancer-free within three months. Seven years later it returned in his pancreas and liver. The night before Dave's first immunotherapy infusion, the oncology nurse called to say insurance had denied it. Tiffany had done prior authorizations for years and knew the denial did not add up, so she called the insurer, who had no denial on file at all. The failure was upstream: the hospital's prior authorization specialist had entered a diagnosis code in the field meant for the procedure code, and the portal rejected it as invalid. When they arrived for treatment the next morning, the oncologist was relieved someone had finally figured it out, because she had been watching authorizations get denied without ever learning why. That was not the only failure. A Gamma Knife authorization later sat unsubmitted because nobody attached the clinical notes or pressed the button. And the cancer in Dave's brain turned out to be central nervous system lymphoma, an entirely separate primary cancer that Tiffany believes had been in his eye all along. Mark and Tiffany talk about diagnostic error and the cognitive bias that makes a second primary cancer nearly invisible, about Code Help and the escalation paths families are rarely told about, about what it costs to be the employee who questions things and tries to connect silos, and about why "good catch" recognition is where organizational learning usually stops instead of starts. Dave died at home in April 2025. He used to ask Tiffany what people do who do not have a Tiffy. The book is her answer: scripts for talking with physicians, how to read a bill, how to appeal a denial and how to tell whether a denial is even real, and a closing section on end of life that most caregiving books avoid. What You'll Learn Why insider knowledge is not the same as protection How a single field on a single screen became a denial that nearly delayed cancer treatment Why Tiffany filed a grievance after the problem was already fixed How cognitive bias makes a second primary cancer nearly invisible, even to excellent physicians What Code Help is, and why most families never hear about it What it costs to be the employee who tries to close loops between silos Why "good catch" is where learning usually stops instead of starts How to make a fifteen-minute physician visit actually work Why starting hospice earlier is a practical decision, not a surrender

August 3, 2026Episode 36040 min

Why ESPN's Founder Was Pushed Out of the Network He Built, with Historian Mike Soltys

Bill Rasmussen got fired by the Hartford Whalers, then chased an idea almost nobody believed in: sports television around the clock. He burned through his own money, his credit cards, his son Scott's money, and money from his father, sister, and brother. Six months before launch, out of cash, he signed a deal with Getty Oil for the tens of millions ESPN needed. Episode page with video, links, and more Getty took most of the company. Other terms were left as loose ends to settle after the contract, and employment contracts for Bill, Scott, and the early team were among them. They never got settled. Two early leaders were pushed out almost immediately. Scott was shown the door at launch. Bill was gone a year later. Mike Soltys was hired as ESPN's first PR intern in 1980 and stayed 43 years, the last 20 as a vice president in corporate communications. He's now the network's official historian, and he tells this story on Bill's behalf, because Bill has never called it a mistake and doesn't look back. The lesson holds up for any founder taking outside money: financial control and employment protection are two separate negotiations, and it's easy to lose the second one while focused on the first. Scott Rasmussen says he negotiated far better after watching what happened. Mike also shares why ESPN's first live remote failed on opening night, why the network celebrates its bloopers instead of burying them, and how he used Bill's 1978-79 business diary to settle disputes when everyone remembered the same night differently.

July 27, 2026Episode 35948 min

Why Fighter Pilots Never Use the Word "Mistake" -- with Boo Boucousis

In fighter jet aviation, errors can be fatal -- so the systems built around learning from them have to actually work. My guest is Christian "Boo" Boucousis, a former Royal Australian Air Force fighter pilot and CEO of Afterburner, a leadership firm that has spent three decades translating combat aviation discipline into frameworks for business leaders. Episode page with links and more Boo's favorite mistake is really a reframe of the whole concept: in fighter pilot culture, there's no word for "mistake," only outcomes to debrief. He tells the story of his first mission as a commander, which ended in a visible, ten-second failure in front of three of the most senior leaders in the Air Force -- and how every one of them owned their own error first in the debrief that followed. That moment became the foundation for ORCA (Objective, Result, Cause, Action), the method he now teaches business leaders to replace blame with structured learning. We also get into the difference between "perfect" and "flawless," why an estimated 86 percent of leaders may carry undiagnosed perfectionism, and how that shows up as a need for control at work. If you lead a team and want a more honest way to talk about what went wrong, this conversation is for you.

July 20, 2026Episode 35841 min

Succession Planning Is a Journey, Not an Event -- with Andrea Carpenter and Elizabeth Ledoux

Andrea Carpenter and Elizabeth Ledoux, co-founders of The Transition Strategists, were mid-negotiation on a business succession deal -- Andrea buying into Elizabeth's business -- when Andrea found out she was pregnant. The pregnancy wasn't the mistake. The mistake, as Andrea describes it, was her own rigidity: treating the closing of the deal as a fixed event that had to happen on schedule, instead of one point in an ongoing process. In this episode, Andrea and Elizabeth unpack what changed when they let go of that mindset, and what it taught them about succession more broadly. They talk candidly about being opposite personality types -- Andrea a planner, Elizabeth an adapter -- and how that tension shapes their partnership. They also share the two mistakes they see most often when family businesses transition ownership: starting too late, and leaving the successor out of the design process. Episode page with video, transcript, links, and more If you're navigating a leadership transition, planning to bring in a successor, or thinking about what comes after you step back from something you built, this conversation offers a practical framework for treating that process as a journey worth designing carefully, rather than a deadline to hit.

July 13, 2026Episode 35743 min

A Touch of the Madness: Big Bets, Mistakes, and Trusting Your Gut -- with Larry Kasanoff

Larry Kasanoff has produced more than 200 films, including Terminator 2, True Lies, and the Mortal Kombat franchise. So it's fitting that one of the most useful lessons of his career came from a kid on a set tour. Episode page with links, video, and more Larry had decided to redesign the Mortal Kombat character Kano, dropping his metallic eye because it felt too close to the Terminator's exoskeleton. A junior-high student touring the set saw the new design and had a full-blown panic attack over the change. As Larry puts it, "My mistake hit me. My audience point-blank told me what to do." He had been designing for himself, not for the people who loved the character. He changed Kano back that day, and the character is still going strong decades later. That tension between an artist's instinct and what the audience actually wants runs through the whole conversation. Larry and Mark get into the bet-your-job decision behind Platoon, why an idea everyone instantly loves should make you nervous, and the 3D network that folded in six months because it chased technology with no real idea underneath it -- and what all of that says about the rush to make decisions by algorithm. A candid, funny, and useful conversation about creativity, risk, and the discipline of knowing when to trust your gut and when to listen.

July 6, 2026Episode 35643 min

The Amazon Mistake That Erased Her Income Overnight - with Wiebke Tasch

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 under her real name, not knowing Amazon allows only one per person. Episode page with video, links, and more That is Wiebke's favorite mistake, and losing everything turned out to be the start of her company, Digital Authors. In this episode, she shares how she rebuilt and what the experience taught her about never building a livelihood on a platform you do not control. We also get practical about publishing as a system: why book structure should start with market demand rather than your own wish list, why the first five days after launch shape an Amazon book's entire future, and how to spot the predatory "buy reviews" emails that prey on anxious authors. Wiebke is candid about AI, too -- a useful tool for proofreading and getting unstuck, but a fast track to forgettable, same-sounding books when it replaces your own voice. If you are an expert thinking about writing a book, or you just want a sharp reminder to own your audience instead of renting it, this one is worth your time.

June 8, 2026Episode 35542 min

The Lawyer Mistake That Nearly Killed a Deal: CEO Mike Grossman

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 mentor, Bill Campbell -- the "trillion-dollar coach" -- told him the board was wrong and that he had to fix it fast. Episode page with video, links, and more That story is Mike's favorite mistake, and it opens a candid conversation about what running a startup actually feels like when the cameras are off. Mike is the author of the new book Failure Is an Option: Reflections of a Silicon Valley CEO, and he doesn't filter out the hard parts. We get into why the most common layoff mistake is cutting too little rather than too much, how staged cuts become a "death by a thousand cuts" that erodes a leader's credibility, and why luck and timing often matter more than the Silicon Valley meritocracy myth admits. Mike also makes a practical case for radical transparency -- about finances, lost deals, and failures -- as the way leaders earn the trust they'll need when things get hard. If you lead a team and want an honest look at decision-making, psychological safety, and learning from mistakes, this one's for you.

June 1, 2026Episode 35443 min

Why Speaking Up Backfired Early in Her Career -- with Kate Lowry

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 reviews. Episode page for video, links, and more It backfired. She got marked down for not being a "team player" and carried that mark on her record for the rest of her time at the firm. The lesson Kate draws isn't that she should have stayed silent. It's that good intentions and zeal are not the same as effective action. The best ways to help people, she found, are often more sophisticated -- and when you're up against sophisticated actors who hold power over you, you need to bring equal sophistication. Kate is a CEO coach, venture capitalist, and author of Unbreakable: How to Thrive Under Fear-Based Leaders. In this episode, she and host Mark Graban get into the difference between high standards and fear-based leadership, why psychological safety is about mutual trust rather than comfort, and how the quiet, "West Coast nice" version of fear-based leadership is harder to spot than the cartoonish yelling kind. Kate also explains her concept of reading a leader's "emotional age" to predict their behavior, and offers practical tactics for anyone stuck under a leader who rules through fear.

May 26, 2026Episode 35348 min

A 40-Page Business Plan Is Not a Strategy -- Eric Ries on His First Startup, Incorruptible, and What "Best Practices" Get Wrong

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 gave them practical tips. They told him that wasn't strategy. Sitting there, he realized he didn't actually know what the word meant. That category error -- mistaking a polished plan for a strategy -- is the mistake that eventually became The Lean Startup. In this episode, Eric traces the line from that dorm-room failure to his new book, Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad and How Great Companies Stay Great. He argues that many of the so-called best practices founders are trained to follow aren't pillars of capitalism at all -- they're modern inventions with a poor track record. We get into the Whole Foods unraveling and why John Mackey couldn't simply cut prices, the prehistory of Costco through Sol Price's fiduciary duty to the customer, and what Jim Sinegal built into Costco's governance that has held for four CEOs and forty years. We also look at Novo Nordisk's industrial foundation structure -- a hundred-year-old design that makes companies six times more likely to survive fifty years -- and why most founders have never heard of it. A conversation about strategy, structure, and the quiet ways good companies go bad.