The biases FLAIMS protects against
Smart people make predictable mistakes. Decades of cognitive science have catalogued the systematic errors that creep into every decision, every meeting, every roadmap. FLAIMS does not pretend they go away — it builds structure around them.
- 01I
Automation Bias
Parasuraman & Manzey, 2010People over-trust automated outputs — especially under time pressure. A confident answer from a machine is treated as more reliable than the same answer from a colleague.
Impact on working lifeAI-generated drafts ship without review. Dashboards are believed even when the underlying data is broken. Critical thinking quietly atrophies.
FLAIMS →Intelligence (Human-Centered AI): AI is governed infrastructure with named owners and verification rituals — not a black box on each laptop.
- 02S
Confirmation Bias
Nickerson, 1998People preferentially seek, interpret and remember information that confirms what they already believe — and discount what contradicts it.
Impact on working lifeStrategy reviews become applause meetings. Red flags from junior staff get reframed as 'not understanding the bigger picture'. The same hire profile keeps failing.
FLAIMS →Segmentation of Power: cold Governance checks data, facts and numbers separately from warm Leadership coaching — disagreement is structural, not personal.
- 03F
Status Quo Bias
Samuelson & Zeckhauser, 1988Defaults win. People stay with the current tool, process or supplier even when a clearly better option exists, because change feels like loss.
Impact on working lifeLegacy stacks survive a decade past their usefulness. 'We always did it this way' kills better Flow designs. Migrations get postponed until they become emergencies.
FLAIMS →Flow + Mastery: time-boxed decision rooms force a choice; deliberate practice keeps craft sharp instead of defaulting to habit.
- 04A
Sunk Cost Fallacy
Arkes & Blumer, 1985People continue investing in a failing course of action because they have already invested — even when stopping is clearly the better move.
Impact on working lifeDoomed projects get more budget instead of less. Bad hires stay too long. Acquisitions get defended years after the thesis broke.
FLAIMS →Accountability: named owners + evidence-based stop/continue checkpoints make exit the structural default, not a personal defeat.
- 05L
Groupthink
Janis, 1972Cohesive groups suppress dissent to preserve harmony. Members self-censor doubts; the illusion of unanimity replaces real reasoning.
Impact on working lifeLeadership offsites end with twelve nods and zero hard questions. Risk is named once in a corridor and never in the room.
FLAIMS →Leadership + Segmentation of Power: co-active coaching trains dissent; the Gravity Decision Model assigns weight by stakes, not by who spoke loudest.
- 06A
Hindsight Bias
Fischhoff, 1975After an outcome is known, people see it as having been predictable — and judge the original decision-maker as if they should have known.
Impact on working lifeBlameless retros become blameful. Risk-taking gets punished after the fact, so people stop taking smart risks at all.
FLAIMS →Accountability: separates the quality of the decision from the quality of the outcome. The system, not the person, is on trial.
- 07M
Dunning-Kruger Effect
Kruger & Dunning, 1999People with low competence overestimate their ability; people with high competence often underestimate theirs. The least skilled are the most confident.
Impact on working lifeConfident-but-wrong voices dominate. True experts get talked over. Promotion goes to assertiveness instead of mastery.
FLAIMS →Mastery: an explicit craft ladder with deliberate practice and external feedback — competence is visible, not just claimed.
- 08I
Availability Heuristic
Tversky & Kahneman, 1973People judge how likely something is by how easily an example comes to mind — recent, vivid or emotional events feel more probable than they are.
Impact on working lifeOne loud customer complaint reshapes the roadmap. One bad hire makes the next ten interviews paranoid. Last quarter's crisis becomes this quarter's strategy.
FLAIMS →Intelligence: governed data and AI-assisted base-rates anchor decisions in actual frequency, not in the loudest recent memory.
- 09F
Planning Fallacy
Kahneman & Tversky, 1979People systematically underestimate how long tasks will take and how much they will cost — even when they have done the same task many times before.
Impact on working lifeRoadmaps slip by 50–200%. Quarterly commitments are theatre. Trust between delivery and leadership erodes one missed deadline at a time.
FLAIMS →Flow: WIP-limits, CoreJobs and time-boxed decision rooms convert wishful estimates into observed throughput.
- 10S
Halo Effect
Thorndike, 1920One positive trait (charisma, school name, past success) bleeds into unrelated judgements about a person or company.
Impact on working lifeCharismatic leaders get unchecked authority. Big-brand vendors win deals their product can't back up. Hiring tilts toward 'looks right'.
FLAIMS →Segmentation of Power: authority is granted per decision class, not per person — and reviewed by cold governance.
Structure beats willpower.
You cannot train these biases out of people — they are how human cognition works. What you can do is design the organisation so the biases meet friction at exactly the right moments: in governance, in decision rooms, in AI usage, in retrospectives. FLAIMS turns each bias into a structural checkpoint instead of a personal failing.
See how it works →- IAutomation BiasIntelligence
- SConfirmation BiasSegmentation
- FStatus Quo BiasFlow
- ASunk Cost FallacyAccountability
- LGroupthinkLeadership
- AHindsight BiasAccountability
- MDunning-Kruger EffectMastery
- IAvailability HeuristicIntelligence
- FPlanning FallacyFlow
- SHalo EffectSegmentation
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