New user?
Also registered?
Former athletes on My Favorite Mistake share lessons about practice, coaching, pressure, and asking for help—and what those experiences can teach us about learning at work. Read More "What Former Athletes Teach Us About Learning from Mistakes at Work"
Opening day of the 2002 NFL season gave us a remarkable—and painful—example of a very human mistake. Trigger warning if you’re a Cleveland Browns fan. With seconds left on the clock, the Cleveland Browns were clinging to a two-point lead over the Kansas City Chiefs. As the final play unfolded,… Read More "Dwayne Rudd’s Helmet Toss: A Lesson in Checking Assumptions"
A mistake can produce something worth investigating. The learning comes from what we do after noticing it: examine the result, test our assumptions, and decide what to change. Woodford Reserve’s Toasted Bourbon offers an example. The barrel mix-up behind Toasted Bourbon According to The Bourbon Review’s report of the 2024… Read More "Woodford Reserve’s Bourbon Mistake: What Leaders Can Learn"
Jim Marshall’s wrong-way run is one of football’s most memorable mistakes. It is also a small part of a much longer career. When I think about learning from mistakes, that distinction matters: we can examine a bad play without making it the whole story of a person. Marshall died on… Read More "Jim Marshall’s Wrong-Way Run: Learning Beyond One Mistake"
Admitting a mistake can help a leader begin a useful conversation. The test comes afterward: what did you learn, what will you change, and how will you respond when someone else gets something wrong? In the interview below with The Daily Show, retired General Stanley McChrystal talks about still making… Read More "Why Leaders Should Admit Mistakes: A Lesson from Stanley McChrystal"
The Mistakes That Make Us is about how leaders respond when things go wrong—and how those responses shape what people do next. We can make it easier to admit a mistake, learn from it, and improve the work. Or we can make hiding it seem like the safer choice. I… Read More "The Mistakes That Make Us: Book Summary and Key Lessons"