The survivorship bias

Listening to captivating stories can lead to biased evaluations and irreversible mistakes in business.

When it comes to dealing with critical problems, it is useful to become a story sceptic.

Stories based on the past can become outdated when situations change suddenly and drastically. Traditions built on them often persists long after.

• A few decades ago, a college degree would almost certainly guarantee a lucrative career. This is no longer true, but the...

Stories often focus on the outcomes that can be seen while ignoring the underlying processes.

• This leads to widespread blindness to possible deceptive behaviours that contributed to the outcomes. Examples include Ponzi schemes and fraudulent business...

Some stories fail to see the existing relationship when causes and effects are separated by time. Stories can misinterpret investments that feature worse-before-better dynamics.

New leaders may receive acclaim or blame for results that happen right after their appointment ...

Stories can be misleading despite providing information.

• Some stories can feature a combination of warning signs. The more warning signs a story shows, the more scepticism is needed.
• Time-related biases and selection problems can happen even when eve...

The ability to create stories helps people to cooperate and move forward. Stories have multiple advantages: They allow us to discern complex situations, remember ideas, communicate with others, and make predictions about the future.

It is vital for managers and en...

A narrative created after a specific result often downplays alternative scenarios that could have happened, making success and failure seem more predictable than they are.

Outcomes that seem obvious in hindsight are often unknown at the time of the decision,

Data-based analyses are often turned into a story for easier understanding and adoption. But the stories are limiting the discussion to the average statistical effects.

Stories based on the average are often only valid for the average of the samples and might hide significant risks...

Personal experience and notable events may be appealing but often tend to be unrepresentative.

In reality, the more unique the observation, the less likely it is to generalise. When dealing with complex decisions, many organisations now favour data-based algorithms over ex...