The biases FLAIMS protects against
Capable people make systematic errors. Decades of cognitive science have catalogued the patterns that distort decisions, meetings and roadmaps alike. FLAIMS does not pretend those patterns disappear; 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 trusted even when the underlying data is wrong. Critical thinking gradually erodes.
FLAIMS →Intelligence (Human-Centered AI) introduces structural friction against this bias: AI is treated as governed infrastructure with named owners and verification rituals, instead of 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 rounds. Red flags from junior staff get reframed as missing the bigger picture. The same hiring pattern keeps producing the same results.
FLAIMS →Segmentation of Power introduces structural friction against this bias: cold Governance reviews data, facts and numbers separately from warm Leadership coaching, so disagreement shows up as structure, not personal attack.
- 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 introduce structural friction against this bias: time-boxed decision rooms force an explicit choice, and deliberate practice keeps craft sharp instead of letting habit decide.
- 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 lifeFailing projects attract more budget instead of less. Poor hiring decisions outlast their welcome. Acquisitions get defended long after the original thesis collapsed.
FLAIMS →Accountability introduces structural friction against this bias: named owners and 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 introduce structural friction against this bias: co-active coaching trains dissent, and 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 introduces structural friction against this bias: it 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 introduces structural friction against this bias: an explicit craft ladder with deliberate practice and external feedback makes competence visible, not just claimed. Note: part of this pattern may be a statistical artifact; FLAIMS treats it as a design risk, not a verdict on individuals.
- 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 introduces structural friction against this bias: 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 introduces structural friction against this bias: 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 introduces structural friction against this bias: authority is granted per decision class, not per person, and reviewed by cold governance.
Structure beats willpower.
These biases cannot be trained away; they are how human cognition works. What you can do is design the organisation so the biases meet friction at the right moments: in governance, in decision rooms, in AI usage, in retrospectives. FLAIMS turns each bias into a structural checkpoint rather than 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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