How Audie Penn's "Favorite Mistake" Got Him Fired

My guest for Episode #18 of the “My Favorite Mistake” podcast is Audie Penn, an operational performance consultant at Audie Penn Consulting.

In today's episode, Audie tells a story about a job that he got fired from early in his career. Audie got results, but got fired, he thinks, for making people look bad for solving what had been viewed as a long-unsolvable problem. We talk about the importance of relationships and organizational politics and his lessons learned from that episode. He's now become a successful consultant, proof positive that we can build upon mistakes to end up stronger and better off for them. We also talk about what Audie calls “the dignity of work,” which I think is a very important concept.

You can listen to or watch the episode below. A transcript also follows lower on this page.

Podcast Audio:

Check out all episodes on the My Favorite Mistake main page.

Video Podcast:

Quotes:

"As leaders, if we're not respecting people, if we're not providing that opportunity to participate and be part of the community, we are the problem."

Regarding Lean or operational excellence: "If you have all the operational tools, but you don't have the right culture, you will still fail."

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