One of the best team practices I’ve ever seen was something an engineering group called Messed Up Monday. On the first Monday of every month, all 35 engineers gathered for lunch with pizza and shared the biggest mistake they had made in the previous month—and what they learned from it.
At the end of the session, the group voted, and the “winner” received a tongue-in-cheek trophy for the biggest mistake of the month. It wasn’t about glorifying failure—it was about normalizing it. In a single meeting, the team surfaced 35 lessons learned. Their collective knowledge grew faster, and people became more willing to take smart risks, knowing that mistakes wouldn’t be buried or punished, but turned into shared progress.
That’s the power of taking fear out of the system. Teams that don’t fear mistakes move faster, adapt better, and create more value than teams who spend their energy hiding problems.
Two Simple Practices to Start Today:
- Normalize Mistakes – Create regular space for your team to share what didn’t work and what they learned. Make it clear that learning matters more than blame.
- Catch Someone Doing It Right – Recognize one positive action this week, no matter how small, and highlight the behavior you want to see repeated.