Learn from Failure: The Key to Successful Decision Making
CBS People of Distinction
CBS People of Distinction is a nationally and internationally syndicated radio program that spotlights authors, thought leaders, and innovators whose work sparks meaningful conversation. Hosted under the CBS Radio umbrella, the show goes beyond surface-level promotion and dives into the ideas behind the work. Each episode is designed to challenge listeners, invite reflection, and highlight voices that are shaping culture, faith, and society. It’s not about hype, it’s about substance. That’s what sets the program apart.
The Host Benjie Cole
Benji Cole is the host of People of Distinction and the son of legendary broadcaster Al Cole. Known for his thoughtful, curiosity-driven interview style, Benji has built a reputation for asking the questions people actually want answered. He doesn’t rush conversations or soften challenging ideas. Instead, he creates space for authors to explain their message with clarity, honesty, and depth, making complex topics accessible to a wide audience.
From the Penalty Box to the Playbook: Why Sicina Wrote This Book
The inspiration behind Learn from Failure: The Key to Successful Decision Making came from Robert V. Sicina’s decades of real-world experience—especially moments when decisions didn’t work out. Teaching a university course called Learn from Failure forced him to confront an uncomfortable truth: most people experience failure but never truly understand it. Over time, Sicina realized that failure isn’t random bad luck—it follows patterns driven by bias, emotion, complexity, and poor oversight. The book was born from a desire to expose those patterns and give readers a framework to make better decisions, not perfect ones.
A Framework for Thinking When the Stakes Are High
Learn from Failure: The Key to Successful Decision Making is a practical, no-nonsense exploration of why smart, capable people consistently make bad decisions. Drawing from real-world business failures, leadership breakdowns, warfare, economics, and Sicina’s own high-stakes experiences, the book dismantles the comforting myth that failure is mostly about bad luck. Instead, it shows how poor outcomes are usually the result of predictable human behavior—biases, overconfidence, emotional blind spots, and flawed assumptions hiding in plain sight.
Essentially, the book is Sicina’s breakdown of the three dominant drivers of failure: irrationality, complexity, and uncertainty. He explains how decision-makers routinely underestimate these forces, even when armed with data, experience, and expert advice. Through vivid case studies and candid self-reflection, Sicina illustrates how organizations and individuals alike fall into the same traps—groupthink, ego, fear of dissent, and the illusion of control—again and again. The message is uncomfortable, but intentional: improvement starts with accountability.
What separates this book from typical leadership or self-help titles is that it doesn’t promise perfection or easy wins. Instead, it offers a structured framework for post-failure analysis and concrete methods to improve decision-making over time. Sicina treats failure as an unavoidable companion to ambition—and a powerful teacher when approached with discipline and humility. The result is a book that functions as both a diagnostic tool and a practical playbook, grounded in realism and refreshingly honest about the limits of human judgment.
The Mind Behind the Method: Robert V. Sicina
Robert V. Sicina is a seasoned executive, educator, and author with decades of experience navigating high-stakes decisions in business and leadership. He has held senior roles in major corporations and has taught future leaders at the university level, including developing and teaching a course focused entirely on learning from failure. His credibility comes not from theory alone, but from lived experience—wins, losses, and everything in between. In Learn from Failure, Sicina distills a lifetime of hard-earned lessons into a framework that bridges corporate strategy with human behavior. His voice is authoritative without being preachy—and that’s rare.
Why This Conversation Matters Now More Than Ever
Because most decision-making advice is fantasy. Learn from Failure deals in reality. It confronts ego, bias, fear, and flawed thinking head-on—issues leaders face daily but rarely admit publicly. The book deserves a CBS interview because it offers something audiences are hungry for: accountability without blame, insight without jargon, and wisdom earned the hard way. In a world obsessed with success stories, this book explains the mechanics of failure—and that’s where real growth happens. That message isn’t just timely; it’s universal.