The 4S Framework: Lessons from Origami for Life and Business

How the ancient art of paper folding teaches us Thomas Sterner‘s principles of discipline and focus


There’s something magical about watching a master origami artist transform a simple sheet of paper into an intricate crane, dragon, or flower. What starts as a flat, unremarkable square becomes something beautiful and complex through nothing more than strategic folds. This transformation embodies a profound truth about learning, growth, and achievement—one that Thomas M. Sterner captures brilliantly in his book “The Practicing Mind” through what I call the 4S Framework: Simplify, Small, Slow, and Short.

The 4S Framework Explained

Sterner’s framework offers a counterintuitive approach to mastery in our fast-paced, instant-gratification world. Let’s explore each element through the lens of origami, then see how these principles revolutionize business thinking.

1. Simplify: The Power of Reduction

In origami, every complex creation begins with the same foundation: a single square of paper. No glue, no scissors, no elaborate tools—just paper and intention. The art lies not in adding complexity, but in finding the elegant simplicity within complexity.

Master origami artists don’t start by imagining the final crane; they focus on the next fold. Each fold is a simple action: valley fold, mountain fold, inside reverse fold. The complexity emerges from the accumulation of simple, deliberate actions.

The Business Connection: The most successful businesses often have the simplest core concepts. Amazon started with one idea: sell books online. Google began with one mission: organize the world’s information. Netflix simplified entertainment: movies by mail, then streaming. They didn’t launch with dozens of features—they perfected one simple value proposition first.

2. Small: Starting with Minimal Viable Actions

Every origami journey begins with a modest square of paper—often just 6 inches by 6 inches. You don’t need expensive materials or vast resources. The constraint of size actually enhances creativity and forces precision. Small paper means small mistakes, quick learning cycles, and lower stakes for experimentation.

When learning origami, you don’t start with a 1,000-step dragon. You begin with a simple boat or paper airplane. These small projects build fundamental skills while providing immediate satisfaction and confidence.

The Business Connection: The startup world has embraced this through the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) concept. Instead of spending years building the perfect product, successful entrepreneurs start small. Facebook began as a simple directory for Harvard students. Airbnb started with air mattresses in the founders’ apartment. Twitter emerged from a simple question: “What are you doing?”

Small beginnings allow for rapid iteration, reduced financial risk, and faster market feedback. They also make the seemingly impossible feel achievable.

3. Slow: The Paradox of Patient Progress

Here’s where origami reveals its deepest wisdom: going slow actually makes you faster. When you rush through folds, you create imprecision that compounds throughout the model. A valley fold that’s slightly off becomes a major structural problem twenty steps later. You end up starting over, taking much longer than if you’d been deliberate from the beginning.

Experienced origami artists move with methodical precision. They study the diagram, understand the intended result, make the fold carefully, and ensure it’s correct before proceeding. This “slow” approach leads to flawless execution and faster overall completion.

The Business Connection: In business, “slow” means taking time to understand your market, validate assumptions, and build solid foundations. Companies that rush to scale often collapse under their own weight. Those that move deliberately—like Patagonia’s careful expansion or In-N-Out Burger’s methodical geographic growth—build sustainable, lasting enterprises.

Slow also means giving your team time to understand strategy, your customers time to adopt your product, and yourself time to develop genuine expertise. The paradox is that this patient approach ultimately accelerates long-term success.

4. Short: Bite-Sized Learning Sessions

Origami mastery doesn’t come from marathon folding sessions that leave you frustrated and fatigued. It comes from consistent, short practice periods. Fifteen minutes of focused folding is more valuable than two hours of distracted attempts.

Short sessions maintain engagement, prevent mental fatigue, and allow for better retention. Each brief practice builds on the previous one, creating steady progress without burnout. You might learn one new fold per session, but those folds compound into increasingly sophisticated models over time.

The Business Connection: The most effective business development happens in short, focused sprints rather than endless work marathons. The Pomodoro Technique, agile development cycles, and regular brief check-ins all reflect this principle.

Short also applies to goal setting. Instead of aiming to “transform the industry,” successful businesses set short-term, achievable milestones. Weekly objectives, monthly targets, and quarterly goals create momentum and maintain motivation while building toward larger visions.

The Compound Effect: How 4S Creates Mastery

The magic happens when these four principles work together. In origami, you simplify complex forms into basic folds, start with small projects and small pieces of paper, work slowly and deliberately, and practice in short, focused sessions. This approach doesn’t just create paper art—it develops patience, precision, spatial intelligence, and the ability to see complex systems as sequences of simple steps.

The same compound effect occurs in business. Companies that simplify their core offering, start small with their market, move slowly enough to build solid foundations, and focus on short-term achievable goals often outperform those that try to do everything at once.

Practical Applications for Your Business

For Entrepreneurs:

  • Simplify your business model to one clear value proposition
  • Start with a small, well-defined target market
  • Move slowly enough to gather meaningful customer feedback
  • Set short weekly goals rather than only focusing on yearly objectives

For Teams:

  • Simplify project scope to essential features
  • Break large initiatives into small, manageable components
  • Allow time for thorough planning and execution
  • Work in short sprints with regular review cycles

For Personal Development:

  • Simplify skill development to one core competency at a time
  • Start with small daily practices
  • Progress slowly enough to build solid foundations
  • Commit to short, consistent learning sessions over sporadic marathons

The Origami Mindset in Leadership

Perhaps the most profound lesson from origami is about the nature of creation itself. Every fold matters. Every decision has consequences that ripple through the entire structure. There are no shortcuts, but there is elegance in the process when you embrace the 4S principles.

Great leaders, like master origami artists, understand that transformation happens one fold at a time. They resist the urge to force outcomes and instead focus on perfecting the process. They know that rushing leads to structural weaknesses, while patience creates strength.

Conclusion: The Art of Disciplined Progress

In our age of instant everything, origami offers a different path—one that mirrors Sterner’s insights about developing a practicing mind. The art teaches us that complexity emerges from simplicity, that small beginnings enable great achievements, that slow progress is often the fastest route to mastery, and that short, focused efforts compound into extraordinary results.

Whether you’re building a business, developing a skill, or pursuing any meaningful goal, the 4S framework provides a sustainable path forward. Like the origami artist who transforms a simple square into something beautiful, you can transform your aspirations into reality—one deliberate fold at a time.

The next time you feel overwhelmed by the complexity of your goals, remember the origami master. Pick up that simple square of paper. Make one fold. Then another. Trust the process, embrace the principles, and watch as something extraordinary emerges from the most humble beginnings.

What will you create with your next fold?

Reasons are bullshit.Reasons are often just excuse, however, we use them to hide our shortcomings from ourselves.

Have you ever wondered why some people seem to effortlessly turn their dreams into reality while others remain perpetually stuck in the planning phase? Bernard Roth’s “The Achievement Habit: Stop Wishing, Start Doing, and Take Command of Your Life” offers a refreshingly honest answer: achievement isn’t about having the best ideas or the most talent, it’s about developing the right habits and taking consistent action.

The Core Message: Achievement Is a Learnable Skill

Roth, a Stanford professor and co-founder of the renowned d.school, brings decades of design thinking expertise to personal development. His central thesis is revolutionary in its simplicity: achievement is a habit that can be learned, practiced, and strengthened like a muscle. Drawing from real student transformations in his Stanford class “The Designer in Society,” Roth demonstrates that the same design thinking principles used to solve complex organizational problems can redesign your entire life.

The book’s power lies in its practical approach. Rather than offering feel-good platitudes, Roth presents a systematic method for breaking through self-imposed limitations and creating lasting change.

Three Game-Changing Takeaways

1. Your Perspective Creates Your Reality

One of the book’s most profound insights is that meaning is entirely subjective—we assign significance to everything in our lives, and these assignments shape our actions and outcomes. Roth argues that changing how you label and view situations can unlock creativity and positive transformation.

This isn’t just positive thinking; it’s strategic reframing. When you recognize that your interpretation of events—not the events themselves—determines your response, you gain tremendous power to change your experience. The practical exercise here is simple but transformative: regularly question your assumptions and consciously relabel familiar situations to open new possibilities.

2. Reasons Are Just Sophisticated Excuses

Perhaps the book’s most controversial chapter tackles our relationship with excuses. Roth boldly states that most reasons we give for our actions are simply sophisticated excuses designed to protect our self-image. While this might sound harsh, it’s liberating once you embrace it.

The author isn’t advocating for social rudeness, externally, reasons may still be necessary. But internally, questioning every reason forces honest self-assessment. If something truly matters to you, your actions should reflect that priority without elaborate justification. This shift from explanation to action is where real change begins.

3. Doing Beats Trying Every Time

The distinction between “trying” and “doing” runs throughout the book like a golden thread. Roth emphasizes that real achievement comes only through committed action, not good intentions or endless discussions. There’s a fundamental difference between someone who says “I’ll try to exercise” and someone who simply exercises.

This connects to his advocacy for prototyping, taking small, experimental steps to build momentum. Rather than waiting for the perfect plan, start with imperfect action. Small wins build confidence and break the inertia that keeps most people stuck in perpetual preparation mode.

Why This Book needs recommendation?

In our age of endless information and analysis paralysis, “The Achievement Habit” offers a refreshing antidote. Roth’s background in design thinking brings practical structure to personal development, moving beyond motivation to methodology. The book doesn’t just inspire—it instructs.

What makes this particularly relevant is how Roth addresses modern challenges like overthinking, perfectionism, and the tendency to substitute planning for action. His emphasis on collaboration and asking for help counters our increasingly isolated approach to personal growth.

The Bottom Line

“The Achievement Habit” succeeds because it treats personal development as a design problem rather than a motivation issue. Roth shows that achievement isn’t about having the right personality or waiting for inspiration, it’s about building systems and habits that consistently move you forward.
The book’s real strength lies in its integration of mindset shifts with practical action. It’s not enough to change how you think; you must change what you do. And it’s not enough to take random action; you must align that action with an empowering self-image and clear purpose.

If you’re tired of books that make you feel good but don’t create lasting change, “The Achievement Habit” offers something different: a proven framework for turning intentions into results. Roth’s message is both challenging and hopeful, you have more control over your outcomes than you think, but only if you’re willing to stop making excuses and start taking consistent action.

The question isn’t whether you can achieve more in your life. The question is whether you’re ready to make achievement a habit.

Non-Response Bias: The Silent Distorter of Data

Introduction

When we conduct surveys or studies or ask for feedback, we often focus on the responses we receive—analyzing patterns, drawing conclusions, and making decisions based on this data. However, what about the voices we never hear? The participants who decline to respond, hang up the phone, ignore the email, or simply cannot be reached? Their absence from our data can tell an important story of its own—one that might significantly alter our conclusions if we knew it.

This is the challenge of non-response bias, a systematic error that occurs when those who respond to a survey differ in meaningful ways from those who don’t respond. Unlike sampling error, which can be addressed through larger sample sizes, non-response bias can persist or even worsen as you collect more data if the underlying pattern of non-response remains consistent.

What Exactly Is Non-Response Bias?

Non-response bias occurs when people who don’t respond to surveys or studies have characteristics that differ from those who do respond, leading to skewed results that don’t accurately represent the target population. In statistical terms, it’s a type of selection bias where the selection process is driven by the subjects themselves rather than the researchers.

For example, imagine a university sending out a satisfaction survey to all its graduates. Those who had particularly positive or negative experiences might be more motivated to respond than those with moderate experiences. If the survey concludes that 40% of graduates were extremely satisfied and 30% extremely dissatisfied, this might represent a distorted picture compared to the true distribution.

Real-World Examples of Non-Response Bias

The Literary Digest Poll of 1936

Perhaps the most famous historical example of non-response bias occurred during the 1936 U.S. presidential election. The Literary Digest, a respected magazine, conducted what was then the largest political poll in history, mailing out surveys to over 10 million Americans. Based on the 2.4 million responses they received, they confidently predicted that Republican Alf Landon would defeat incumbent Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt in a landslide.

Instead, Roosevelt won in one of the most lopsided victories in American electoral history, carrying 46 of 48 states.

What went wrong? The Literary Digest had compiled their mailing list from telephone directories, club memberships, and magazine subscriptions—all indicators of higher socioeconomic status during the Great Depression. Additionally, those who responded were more likely to be politically engaged and opposed to Roosevelt’s New Deal policies. The combined effect of this sampling bias and non-response bias led to a spectacular polling failure that effectively ended the magazine’s reputation.

Modern Health Surveys

Health surveys frequently suffer from non-response bias. People with serious health conditions may be too ill to participate in surveys, while those who are health-conscious might be overrepresented in responses. This can lead to underestimating disease prevalence and overestimating healthy behaviors in the general population.

A striking example comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), which has seen declining response rates over time. Research comparing early BRFSS data to subsequent health records found that respondents were generally healthier than non-respondents, leading to potentially optimistic assessments of population health.

Employee Satisfaction Surveys

Corporate employee satisfaction surveys often suffer from non-response bias. Employees who feel extremely negative about their workplace may fear retaliation despite promises of anonymity. Conversely, highly satisfied employees might not feel motivated to respond because they see no problems needing attention.

Additionally, the busiest and most overworked employees—whose feedback might be particularly valuable regarding workload issues—often don’t have time to complete voluntary surveys, creating a systematic gap in the data.

Online Product Reviews

The dramatic bimodal distribution of online product reviews (many 5-star and 1-star reviews, fewer in the middle) is a classic example of non-response bias in everyday life. Customers with strong positive or negative experiences feel motivated to leave reviews, while those with average experiences typically don’t bother. This creates a “J-shaped” or “U-shaped” distribution that may not reflect the true customer experience.

Why Does Non-Response Bias Occur?

Several factors contribute to non-response bias:

Accessibility Issues

Some potential respondents simply cannot be reached or face barriers to participation:

  • Lack of internet access for online surveys
  • Language barriers
  • Physical or cognitive disabilities that make participation difficult
  • Technological literacy limitations
  • Time constraints due to work or family responsibilities

Topic Sensitivity

The subject matter itself can influence who responds:

  • People may avoid surveys on stigmatized topics (mental health, financial struggles, etc.)
  • Those with strong opinions on a topic are more likely to participate
  • Surveys on specialized topics may only draw responses from those with relevant experience

Survey Fatigue

As people are increasingly bombarded with requests for feedback:

  • Response rates have declined across virtually all survey methods
  • Those who do respond may be unusual in their willingness to complete surveys
  • Longer surveys tend to have higher abandonment rates, creating another layer of bias

Trust and Privacy Concerns

In an era of data breaches and privacy concerns:

  • People may distrust how their information will be used
  • Certain demographic groups may have historical reasons to distrust researchers
  • Questions perceived as too personal may be skipped or cause survey abandonment

Detecting Non-Response Bias

How can researchers determine if non-response bias is affecting their results? Several approaches can help:

Compare Respondents to Known Population Characteristics

If demographic information about the target population is available from reliable sources (like census data), researchers can compare the demographic profile of respondents to that of the overall population. Significant differences may suggest non-response bias.

Analyze Early vs. Late Responders

Research suggests that late responders often share characteristics with non-responders. By comparing those who responded immediately to those who only responded after multiple reminders, researchers can estimate the direction and magnitude of non-response bias.

Conduct Non-Response Follow-Up Studies

The gold standard approach is to conduct intensive follow-up with a sample of non-respondents, using additional incentives or different contact methods to secure their participation. The responses from this group can then be compared to the original respondents to identify systematic differences.

Wave Analysis

By analyzing how survey results change as additional waves of responses come in (after reminders or follow-ups), researchers can extrapolate what the results might look like if everyone had responded.

Strategies to Minimize Non-Response Bias

While it’s impossible to eliminate non-response bias entirely, several strategies can help mitigate its effects:

Design User-Friendly Surveys

  • Keep surveys concise and focused
  • Use clear, simple language
  • Ensure accessibility across devices and for people with disabilities
  • Provide support for multiple languages when appropriate

Offer Multiple Response Channels

  • Combine online, phone, mail, and in-person collection methods
  • Allow respondents to choose their preferred contact method
  • Implement methods appropriate for the specific population being studied

Use Incentives Strategically

  • Offer appropriate compensation for participation time
  • Consider non-monetary incentives like donation to charity
  • Be careful that incentives don’t introduce their own biases

Implement Persistent Follow-Up

  • Send reminders through multiple channels
  • Schedule follow-ups at different times and days
  • Use increasingly strong incentives for hard-to-reach participants

Build Trust with Potential Respondents

  • Clearly explain how data will be used and protected
  • Partner with trusted community organizations
  • Provide examples of how previous survey results led to positive changes

Statistical Adjustments

  • Use weighting techniques to adjust for known demographic differences
  • Apply propensity score adjustments based on response patterns
  • Implement multiple imputation for missing data when appropriate

The Ethics of Pursuing Non-Respondents

While reducing non-response bias is important for research validity, there’s an ethical balance to strike. Persistent follow-up can cross the line into harassment, and excessive incentives may become coercive. Researchers must consider:

  • Respecting the right to decline participation
  • Setting appropriate limits on follow-up attempts
  • Ensuring incentives are not exploitative of vulnerable populations
  • Being transparent about potential non-response limitations when reporting results

Case Study: Non-Response in COVID-19 Research

The COVID-19 pandemic created unique challenges for researchers studying the disease’s spread and impact. Early studies relied heavily on voluntary participation, potentially missing:

  • Those too ill to participate
  • Communities with limited internet access
  • People working essential jobs without time to participate
  • Those with language barriers or technology limitations
  • Individuals distrustful of medical research

Some research teams addressed these issues by:

  • Combining multiple data sources (administrative, clinical, and survey data)
  • Using community health workers to reach underrepresented groups
  • Implementing targeted sampling in areas with known low response rates
  • Working with trusted community organizations as intermediaries

These efforts revealed important disparities in COVID-19’s impact that might have been missed with conventional approaches.

Implications for Data Consumers

For those who use data rather than collect it, awareness of non-response bias is equally important:

Ask Critical Questions

When presented with survey results, ask:

  • What was the response rate?
  • Who might be missing from this data?
  • How might the conclusions change if non-respondents were included?
  • What steps were taken to address potential non-response bias?

Look for Transparency

Quality research will acknowledge limitations and potential biases. Be skeptical of results that claim perfect representativeness with low response rates.

Consider Multiple Data Sources

No single data source is perfect. Triangulate information from different sources with different methodological strengths and weaknesses.

Be Wary of Extreme Claims

If survey results seem dramatically different from expectations or other data sources, non-response bias may be a factor worth considering.

Conclusion: Embracing the Challenge

Non-response bias represents one of the most persistent challenges in survey research, and its importance has grown as response rates have declined across countries and methods. Rather than seeing it as merely a methodological nuisance, we should view addressing non-response bias as an opportunity to hear diverse voices and understand the full spectrum of human experiences.

By acknowledging who might be missing from our data, implementing strategies to include them, and remaining humble about the limitations of our methods, we can work toward research that more accurately represents the populations we study.

The story told by silence—by those who don’t respond—can be as important as the story told by those who do. In the pursuit of truth and understanding, we must listen carefully to both.

Survival Bias: Learning from History’s Hidden Failures

Looking beyond what survived to understand the complete picture

Introduction

When we study history, we naturally focus on what remains: the buildings still standing, the books preserved through centuries, the businesses that thrived, the medical treatments that worked. This tendency creates what statisticians call “survival bias” – a logical error where we concentrate on people or things that made it past some selection process while overlooking those that did not, leading to false conclusions and distorted perspectives.

While the bullet-hole-riddled WWII aircraft example is perhaps the most famous illustration of survival bias, history offers us countless other illuminating cases that reveal how this cognitive error shapes our understanding of the past and influences our decisions today.

The Healthy Worker Effect: Industrial Revolution’s Hidden Truth

During the Industrial Revolution and early 20th century, medical researchers made a puzzling discovery: factory workers, despite laboring in what we now know were often hazardous conditions, frequently appeared healthier in statistical studies than the general population.

This counterintuitive finding, known as “the healthy worker effect,” represented a classic case of survival bias. Only individuals with robust constitutions could endure the punishing physical demands of factory work. Those who became ill simply disappeared from the workforce—and consequently from the studies—creating a false impression about working conditions.

The healthiest workers remained visible in the data, while those whose health deteriorated became invisible. This statistical illusion delayed necessary workplace safety reforms and obscured the true human cost of industrialization for decades. Only when researchers began tracking workers longitudinally and accounting for those who left the workforce did the actual health impacts become apparent.

The Deceptive Durability of Ancient Architecture

We marvel at structures like the Roman Pantheon, with its magnificent unreinforced concrete dome that has stood for nearly two millennia, while modern concrete often deteriorates within decades. This observation has led many to conclude that ancient Roman engineers possessed superior construction knowledge that was somehow “lost” to history.

However, this represents a classic survival bias. What we see today are only the most exceptional examples of Roman architecture—the statistical outliers that survived earthquakes, wars, and the relentless erosion of time. For every Pantheon or Colosseum that remains, thousands of ordinary Roman structures collapsed long ago and were forgotten.

Recent archaeological work has revealed that Roman concrete wasn’t universally superior—many structures failed quickly, but these failures don’t remain for us to observe. The structures that survived often did so because they were built in geologically stable areas, constructed with extraordinary resources by the empire’s finest engineers, or continuously maintained and restored throughout history.

When we consider only the survivors, we mischaracterize the typical Roman building experience and create false narratives about “lost knowledge,” when in fact modern materials science has produced far more reliable and consistently durable building materials.

Medieval Knowledge: The Monastery Filter

Our understanding of medieval thought and culture is profoundly shaped by survival bias. The vast majority of surviving manuscripts from the Middle Ages come from monasteries and religious institutions—texts deemed worthy of careful preservation and painstaking reproduction by scribes.

This creates a fundamentally skewed historical record. Religious perspectives, classical works approved by the Church, and writings by social elites are dramatically overrepresented, while secular literature, folk traditions, dissenting religious views, and the perspectives of ordinary people were far less likely to be preserved.

Historians estimate that less than 1% of all medieval manuscripts survived to the modern era. This tiny fraction profoundly shapes our perception of medieval society, making it appear more uniformly religious and intellectually constrained than it likely was. Recent archaeological finds, like the Novgorod birch bark documents in Russia—everyday letters written by ordinary citizens—suggest a much more diverse intellectual landscape than surviving formal manuscripts indicate.

The “Spanish” Flu Misnomer

The deadly influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 became known as the “Spanish Flu” not because it originated in Spain or because Spain suffered more severely, but because of a quirk of information survival. As a neutral country during World War I, Spain had no wartime press censorship, unlike most other affected nations.

While countries like the United States, Britain, France, and Germany suppressed news about the outbreak to maintain wartime morale, Spanish newspapers reported freely on the disease, including the illness of their king, Alfonso XIII. This created the false impression that Spain was uniquely affected when the pandemic was truly global in scope.

Modern research suggests the virus likely originated in the United States or China, but the survival bias in public information—with Spanish reports “surviving” censorship while others didn’t—created a historical distortion that persists in the pandemic’s name over a century later.

Literary Canons: The Survival of the “Greatest”

When we study literature from past centuries, we focus on what literary scholar Franco Moretti calls “the canonical 1%”—the tiny fraction of published works that have been preserved, anthologized, and continuously read. This creates the illusion that past eras produced mostly masterpieces, unlike our own time with its mix of great, good, and forgettable works.

In reality, Sturgeon’s Law—the principle that “90% of everything is crud”—applied just as much to Victorian novels or Renaissance plays as to modern literature. For every Shakespeare, there were dozens of forgotten playwrights; for every Jane Austen, hundreds of forgotten novelists whose works didn’t survive the ruthless filter of time.

This survival bias distorts our perception of literary history and creates unrealistic standards for contemporary writers. It also means our understanding of past literary cultures is based almost entirely on exceptional outliers rather than typical works.

Medical Treatments: History’s Selective Memory

Medical history provides particularly consequential examples of survival bias. Before the advent of rigorous clinical trials, doctors primarily recorded and passed down treatments that seemed to work, creating a body of medical literature rife with survival bias.

When patients recovered after a particular treatment, the treatment received credit—regardless of whether recovery might have happened anyway. Treatments that failed were less likely to be documented or, if documented, less likely to be repeatedly cited in medical texts.

This created a medical canon filled with ineffective or even harmful treatments that persisted for centuries. Bloodletting, for instance, remained a standard medical practice for over 2,000 years despite causing more harm than good in most cases. It survived because doctors noticed and remembered the subset of patients who improved after bloodletting (often despite the treatment, not because of it), while minimizing or forgetting the many who deteriorated.

Only with the development of controlled trials in the 20th century, explicitly designed to counter survival bias by tracking all outcomes, did medicine begin to systematically separate truly effective treatments from those that merely appeared effective due to selective observation.

Business Advice: Survivor Stories

Management literature is notorious for survival bias. Books analyzing “great companies” often study only businesses that succeeded, drawing conclusions about their practices without examining whether failed companies followed the same practices.

A famous example comes from Jim Collins’ business bestseller “Good to Great,” which analyzed companies that transformed from average to exceptional performers. Several companies praised in the book, including Circuit City and Fannie Mae, subsequently collapsed or required government bailouts, raising questions about the methodology’s validity.

By studying only “survivors,” such analyses often mistake luck for skill and correlation for causation. They identify practices that might be common among successful companies but fail to note these same practices may be equally common among failed ones.

Napoleon’s Russian Campaign: The Frozen Evidence

When Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, he began with approximately 450,000 soldiers. Only about 10,000 returned. Historical accounts of the campaign often focus disproportionately on these survivors’ experiences, creating a narrative heavily weighted toward the experiences of those who endured the entire ordeal.

The famous winter retreat from Moscow features prominently in these accounts, with harrowing descriptions of extreme cold and starvation. While these conditions were certainly devastating, survival bias obscures the fact that more of Napoleon’s troops died during the summer advance than during the winter retreat. Disease, heat exhaustion, and Russian guerrilla tactics decimated the Grande Armée before winter arrived.

By focusing primarily on winter survivors’ accounts, historical narratives overemphasized cold as the decisive factor while underrepresenting the many who perished from other causes earlier in the campaign.

Challenging Our Historical Understanding

These examples reveal how survival bias fundamentally shapes our understanding of history. To counter this bias, historians increasingly employ methodologies that actively search for what hasn’t survived, using archaeological evidence, statistical modeling, and cross-cultural comparisons to fill in historical blind spots.

As consumers of history, we should approach historical narratives with healthy skepticism, always asking: What might be missing from this picture? Whose voices weren’t preserved? What failures disappeared from the record?

Conclusion: The Value of Failure

Acknowledging survival bias doesn’t just give us a more accurate view of history—it offers practical wisdom. When we recognize that failure is underrepresented in our understanding of the past, we gain valuable perspective on our own setbacks and the statistical nature of success.

The real lesson of survival bias is that failure is both common and instructive. By seeking out and studying failures rather than focusing exclusively on survivors, we gain insights that would otherwise remain hidden. In business, science, medicine, and personal development, understanding what doesn’t work can be just as valuable as knowing what does.

History’s greatest progress often comes not from replicating past successes, but from analyzing past failures—the very data points that survival bias tends to erase. By actively countering this bias, we develop a richer, more accurate understanding of both history and the present.

As the philosopher George Santayana famously observed, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” To that, we might add: “Those who remember only the surviving parts of the past are condemned to misunderstand it.”

Optimism Bias: Where Good Vibes Wreck Good Plans

You know that moment in a business review where someone says, “We’ll definitely hit the target. It’s only September.” That’s optimism bias. It’s not just a mindset—it’s a recurring guest star in strategy decks, project timelines, and sales forecasts.

What Is Optimism Bias?

Optimism bias is the human tendency to believe that we’re less likely to encounter negative outcomes and more likely to succeed, even when evidence suggests otherwise. It’s why launch dates look like fairy tales and why budgets are often as tight as that last seat on a budget airline.

In business, it shows up with a suit and a smile:

“This will only take two weeks.” (Famous last words.) “The client will definitely sign this order.” (Spoiler: They won’t.) “We can absorb this scope change without affecting delivery.” (Said no Gantt chart ever.)

Where It Hides in Plain Sight

Project Timelines: Always on time, until they’re not. Gantt charts get high on hope. Sales Forecasts: Every lead is “hot.” But apparently, half are in Antarctica. Product Launches: MVPs become FOMOs (Fear Of Missing Out), loaded with “just one more feature.” Change Management: “People will adapt quickly.” Right after they stop resisting it entirely.

Why we fall for it?

We’re wired for progress and positivity. In fact, leaders often need to be optimistic to inspire teams and investors. But unchecked optimism can become a strategic liability, leading to budget overruns, missed milestones, and serious trust erosion.

The Optimism Balanced

Despite these cautions, some optimism remains valuable. As research psychologist Tali Sharot notes, “Optimism pushes us to take risks and attempt difficult things.” The goal isn’t eliminating optimism, but tempering it with reality.
The next time you’re planning an office move, renovation, or technology implementation, ask:
1. What’s our historical accuracy on similar projects?
2. What specific complications might we face that aren’t in our current plan?
3. What would more experienced outsiders estimate for this project?
4. Have we built meaningful contingencies for time, budget, and resources?
By acknowledging optimism bias, we can harness its motivational benefits while avoiding its planning pitfalls. The result? Office changes that actually meet expectations—perhaps the most optimistic outcome of all.

The Optimism Audit (A Survival Kit)

Here’s how to stay hopeful without losing your head (or your quarterly bonus):

Run Pre-Mortems: Before the kickoff, imagine it all went sideways. What caused it? Fix those now. Use RYB Indicators: Red-Yellow-Green status makes optimism earn its stripes. Build Buffers (Secretly): Be the realist who adds padding to timelines—but doesn’t advertise it. Listen to the Skeptics: That person always raising risks? Give them a doughnut. Then listen. Measure Backlog, Not Just Velocity: “Hope is not a strategy.” Data is.

In Summary: Optimism Is a Leadership Asset, When Balanced

Optimism bias isn’t the enemy. It’s your over-caffeinated cousin, fun to have around, but don’t let it drive. Combine its energy with critical thinking, and you’ve got a solid business partner.

Final Thought:

If your project plan reads like a wish list to Santa, it’s time for a reality check. Stay positive—but don’t forget to pack an umbrella.

Conservatism Bias: When We Fail to Update Our Beliefs

Have you ever stubbornly held onto your initial judgment despite mounting evidence to the contrary? That’s conservatism bias at work—our tendency to insufficiently update our beliefs when presented with new information.

We pride ourselves on being rational thinkers, weighing evidence objectively before forming conclusions. Yet cognitive science reveals a systematic flaw in how we process new information: conservatism bias. This tendency to insufficiently revise our beliefs when presented with new evidence affects everything from personal finances to organizational strategy.

What is Conservatism Bias?

Conservatism bias occurs when people update their existing beliefs too slowly in the face of new, relevant information. First documented by psychologist Ward Edwards in the 1960s, this bias shows how we tend to “anchor” to our initial judgments, making only modest adjustments even when confronted with substantial contradictory evidence.

Unlike confirmation bias (where we seek information supporting our existing views), conservatism bias focuses on how we process new information once we encounter it—typically giving it less weight than statistical reasoning would suggest is appropriate.

How Conservatism Bias Manifests

Investment Decisions

Consider an investor who believes a particular stock is undervalued. When the company releases disappointing quarterly earnings, they might acknowledge this negative news but still underestimate its significance. Research from the Indian Securities and Exchange Board shows retail investors typically adjust their price expectations by only 40% of what would be statistically justified following earnings surprises, whether positive or negative.

Medical Diagnoses

A 2020 study in the Indian Journal of Medical Research found that physicians who made initial diagnoses were 30% less likely to completely revise their assessment when contradictory test results arrived compared to doctors seeing the case fresh. This “diagnostic momentum” demonstrates how early judgments resist appropriate updating.

Business Strategy

Organizations frequently underreact to market changes that challenge their existing business models. Kodak famously recognized the threat of digital photography (their engineers actually invented the first digital camera in 1975) but significantly underweighted this evidence when planning their future, clinging to their film-based business model until it was too late.

Why We’re Conservative With New Information

Several factors contribute to conservatism bias:

Cognitive Effort

Thoroughly revising beliefs requires significant mental energy. It’s simply easier to make minor adjustments to existing views than to completely reconsider our position.

Confidence Illusion

We tend to overestimate the accuracy of our initial judgments. This overconfidence makes us less receptive to evidence suggesting we might be wrong.

Status Quo Preference

Humans have a natural tendency to prefer existing states over change. This status quo bias reinforces conservatism in updating beliefs.

Social Reinforcement

Changing our minds dramatically can feel uncomfortable, especially when we’ve publicly committed to a position. This social pressure reinforces incremental rather than transformative belief updates.

Overcoming Conservatism Bias

Quantify When Possible

Using numerical probabilities rather than vague beliefs makes it easier to update appropriately. For instance, assigning specific likelihood percentages to potential outcomes forces more rigorous updating when new evidence arrives.

Seek Outside Perspectives

People without attachment to initial judgments can more objectively assess new information. Creating “red teams” tasked with challenging existing views helps organizations overcome institutional conservatism bias.

Pre-commit to Evidence Thresholds

Decide in advance what evidence would change your mind, before seeing the results. This prevents moving the goalposts when confronted with belief-challenging information.

Practice Bayesian Thinking

Named after 18th-century mathematician Thomas Bayes, Bayesian reasoning provides a formal framework for updating probabilities based on new evidence. Even informal Bayesian thinking—explicitly considering both prior beliefs and the strength of new evidence—can improve belief updating.

Real-World Impact

Conservatism bias isn’t just an academic curiosity, it has substantial real-world consequences. Companies that fail to adequately update their strategic thinking face extinction. Investors who insufficiently revise their market views sacrifice returns. Medical professionals who inadequately integrate new test results may miss critical diagnoses.

By recognizing our tendency toward conservatism bias, we can deliberately counteract it, ensuring that our beliefs more accurately reflect all available evidence rather than giving undue weight to our initial judgments.

The next time you encounter information challenging what you believe, ask yourself: Am I giving this evidence the weight it truly deserves, or am I being conservative in updating my beliefs?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Selective Attention Bias: Why You See Your New Car Everywhere

I recall when I brought my Jeep, with very peculiar and unique grey color, I suddenly I’m seeing grey Jeep everywhere. On my commute, in parking lots, at the grocery store—they’re multiplying like rabbits! Or are they? This phenomenon has a name: selective attention bias.

Let me share what I’ve learned about this fascinating quirk of our minds and how it shapes our daily experiences, both personally and professionally.

What is Selective Attention Bias?

Selective attention bias occurs when our minds prioritize information that aligns with our current focus or interests while filtering out everything else. As cognitive psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains in his book “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” our brains have limited processing capacity and must be selective about what information receives our conscious attention.

“We can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness,” Kahneman writes. This blindness isn’t a flaw, it’s a feature that helps us navigate an overwhelmingly complex world.

The “Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon” (or Frequency Illusion)

That experience with my Jeep Compass? It has another name: the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon or frequency illusion. Once something enters your awareness, you start noticing it everywhere.

Stanford linguistics professor Arnold Zwicky coined the term “frequency illusion” in 2006 to describe this cognitive bias. The thing isn’t actually more common, you’re just more attuned to it 😀.

Real-World Brand Examples

The FedEx Arrow

Look at the FedEx logo. Do you see the arrow between the “E” and “x”? Once someone points it out, you can’t unsee it. But many people go years without noticing this clever design element.

Amazon’s Smile

The Amazon logo has an arrow that points from A to Z (suggesting they sell everything) while forming a smile. Before someone mentions it, most people only see the smile without noticing the A-to-Z connection.

Toblerone’s Hidden Bear

The Toblerone logo contains the silhouette of a bear hidden in the mountain imagery, a nod to Bern, Switzerland (known as the “City of Bears”) where the chocolate was created. Once seen, it’s obvious, but many chocolate lovers miss it completely.

How This Affects Our Lives

Making Decisions

We tend to notice information that confirms our existing beliefs while overlooking contradictory evidence. This confirmation bias affects everything from which news sources we trust to which products we buy.

Marketing and Advertising

Marketers leverage selective attention brilliantly. As marketing professor Jonah Berger notes in his book “Contagious,” “People don’t think in terms of information. They think in terms of narratives.” Brands create narratives that align with your current focus, making their products seemingly appear everywhere.

Personal Development

Being aware of selective attention bias can help us grow. By consciously exposing ourselves to diverse perspectives, we can counteract our brain’s natural tendency to filter information that challenges our worldview.

A Personal Reflection

Last month, I was researching ergonomic office chairs for myself (exciting, I know). Within days, I started noticing office chair ads everywhere online, colleagues’ chairs during video calls, and even found myself analyzing seating in coffee shops.

Was the universe suddenly obsessed with office furniture? Nope—just my brain selectively focusing on what had recently become important to me.

The Professional Takeaway

Understanding selective attention bias has made me a better professional:

  • I deliberately seek diverse perspectives before making decisions
  • I question whether I’m seeing patterns that aren’t actually there
  • I recognize when I might be filtering out important contradictory information

As American psychologist William James observed back in 1890, “My experience is what I agree to attend to.” By becoming conscious of our selective attention, we gain more control over our experience of the world.

What are you selectively attending to today? Look around, you might be surprised by what you’ve been missing!

Availability Bias : When What Comes to Mind Isn’t What Matters

When What Comes to Mind Isn’t What Matters: Availability Bias in Daily Life

We all make dozens of decisions every day, from what to eat for breakfast to how to approach a work project. But how rational are these choices? Cognitive psychologists have identified numerous biases that influence our thinking, and one of the most pervasive is availability bias: our tendency to overweight information that easily comes to mind.

What is Availability Bias?

Availability bias occurs when we base judgments on information that’s mentally “available”, examples that easily come to mind because they’re recent, emotional, or vivid, rather than on complete data or statistics.

As Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman noted, “The mind overestimates unlikely events that are easy to recall.” This bias affects everyone from consumers to CEOs, subtly shaping decisions in ways we rarely notice.

Few Examples from India and Abroad

Manufacturing Safety Decisions

In 2019, after a dramatic machinery accident at a textile factory in Tirupur received significant media coverage, many Indian textile manufacturers invested heavily in that specific type of machine safety equipment. However, data from the Directorate General Factory Advice Service showed that more common hazards like improper material handling caused 58% of factory injuries that year, while machinery accidents accounted for only 14%.

Travel Fears vs. Reality

After Air India Express Flight 1344 crashed in August 2020 during the pandemic, many Indian travelers expressed increased anxiety about flying. Meanwhile, National Crime Records Bureau statistics showed that road accidents in India claimed over 150,000 lives that same year—making car travel approximately 1,000 times more dangerous per kilometer traveled than flying.

Consumer Product Perceptions

When a major smartphone battery defect made international headlines in 2016, consumers worldwide became hyper-aware of potential battery issues. A 2017 survey by the Consumer Electronics Association found 74% of respondents listed battery safety as a top concern when purchasing a new phone, despite the actual failure rate being less than 0.01% of devices.

How This Bias Shapes Our World

Medical Decisions

A study published in the Indian Journal of Medical Research found that patients were significantly more likely to reject a treatment if they personally knew someone who had experienced a rare side effect. This occurred even when presented with statistics showing the treatment’s overwhelming benefits for most patients.

Investment Behavior

When the Indian stock market experienced a sharp correction in early 2022, many retail investors pulled their money out, fearing another major crash like 2008. However, historical data from the Bombay Stock Exchange shows that staying invested through downturns has consistently produced better returns than trying to time market exits and entries.

Overcoming Availability Bias

Seek Statistical Context

When a story grabs your attention, actively look for statistics that put it in context. Is this dramatic event representative or an outlier?

Diversify Information Sources

Consuming varied information sources helps provide a more balanced view of reality. Look beyond trending stories to understand what issues might be important but less visible.

Keep a Decision Journal

Recording your decisions and their outcomes helps identify patterns where availability bias might be influencing your choices. Many successful business leaders in both India and internationally credit this practice with improving their decision quality.

Ask the “Base Rate” Question

When evaluating a situation, ask: “How common is this generally?” For example, before panicking about a medical symptom featured in a news story, check how frequently it actually occurs in the population.

The Path Forward

Availability bias isn’t something we can eliminate, it’s hardwired into how our brains work. However, awareness of this bias can help us pause and consider whether our intuitive judgments might be skewed by what easily comes to mind rather than what actually matters.

By balancing vivid stories with statistical context, we can make decisions that better reflect reality rather than merely what’s most available in our memory.

The next time a dramatic story influences your thinking, ask yourself: Is this truly representative, or simply what comes to mind most easily?

Plan Continuation Bias: When “Staying the Course” Becomes Dangerous

We’ve all been there. You’re driving to a destination using your usual route when a traffic alert pops up on your phone. There’s major congestion ahead, but you think, “I’ll stick with this road anyway—it’s the one I know best.” Twenty minutes later, you’re sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic, watching cars zip by on the alternate route you could have taken.

What just happened? You experienced plan continuation bias—a cognitive trap that affects everyone from everyday commuters to airline pilots, business leaders, and project managers.

What Is Plan Continuation Bias?

Dangers of sticking to a plan despite negative
consequences.

Plan continuation bias (sometimes called “get-there-itis”) is our tendency to continue with an original plan despite changing conditions that make the plan no longer safe, viable, or beneficial. It’s our natural reluctance to revise or abandon a course of action once we’ve committed to it, even when warning signs suggest we should.

This bias is particularly dangerous because it operates below our conscious awareness. We don’t actively decide to ignore new information—we simply fail to give it appropriate weight against our pre-existing plan.

The Psychology Behind the Bias

Several psychological factors contribute to plan continuation bias:

  1. Confirmation bias: We notice and prioritize information that confirms our existing plan while downplaying contradictory evidence.
  2. Loss aversion: Changing plans often involves accepting immediate losses (of time, money, or effort already invested), which we’re naturally wired to avoid.
  3. Goal fixation: When we become hyper-focused on reaching a goal, we may ignore the growing costs or risks of continuing.
  4. Social pressure: No one wants to be seen as indecisive or as someone who “gives up” easily.
  5. Mental workload: Creating a new plan requires cognitive effort, which our brains naturally try to conserve.

Real-World Examples

Aviation Disasters

The concept of plan continuation bias was first extensively studied in aviation, where it contributes to numerous accidents. For example Air India Express Flight 812 crash On 22 May 2010, the Boeing 737-800 passenger jet operating the flight crashed on landing at Mangalore. The crash exemplifies this bias in action. Despite flying into known trouble and deviating many guidelines, the pilots continued their planned route rather than diverting, ultimately encountering shorter runway that led to the crash and loss of almost of all 158!souls on plane. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_India_Express_Flight_812

Business Failures

Kodak’s infamous decline illustrates plan continuation bias in business. Despite developing the first digital camera in 1975, Kodak continued focusing on its traditional film business. As digital photography revolutionized the market, Kodak stubbornly stuck to its original business model until it was too late.

Project Management

Let’s take an example, Kingfisher Airlines’ Aircraft Manufacturing Partnership (2005-2012):

  • Vijay Mallya pursued aggressive expansion with aircraft manufacturing partnerships despite clear financial warning signs
  • The company continued ordering new aircraft and expanding routes when their finances were deteriorating
  • Leadership ignored maintenance issues and operational inefficiencies
  • Eventually collapsed with approximately ₹7,000 crore in debt

How to Combat Plan Continuation Bias

  1. Build decision gates into your plans: Establish predefined points where you’ll stop and reassess whether continuing makes sense.
  2. Assign a devil’s advocate: Designate someone whose job is to question the plan and highlight potential problems.
  3. Create psychological safety: Foster an environment where changing direction isn’t seen as failure but as smart adaptation.
  4. Develop and practice contingency plans: Having alternative plans ready makes it easier to switch when necessary.
  5. Monitor for warning signs: Establish clear metrics that would indicate when a plan needs reconsideration.
  6. Take a step back: Periodically distance yourself from day-to-day execution to evaluate the big picture objectively.

The Adaptability Advantage

While persistence is often celebrated as a virtue, knowing when to change course is equally important. The most successful individuals and organizations aren’t those who never fail, but those who recognize failure quickly and adapt accordingly.

Remember: The most dangerous words in business (and life) might just be “we’ve always done it this way” or “we’ve come too far to turn back now.”

By understanding plan continuation bias and actively working to counteract it, we can make better decisions, avoid unnecessary risks, and ultimately achieve better outcomes—even if the path to those outcomes looks different than we initially imagined.

Have you ever found yourself stuck in a failing plan? What strategies helped you recognize when it was time to change course? Share your experiences in the comments below.

Leadership : Finding the Balance

Leadership is a widely discussed topic, also one of the favoured topic of mine to read and write. And again and again I came across more or less same question, what truly defines a “good leader”? I recently came across a thought-provoking question that captures a common debate:

A. A good leader expects people to decide for themselves what they should do.

B. A good leader makes it clear to everybody what their jobs are

PS: I was taking survey made by Sejal Waghmare at TheVibrantAura

Both statements present unique perspectives on leadership, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. I would like to discuss how these ideas can influence team productivity and promote human-centric work environments..

Option A: Empowering Independence

Leaders who allow team members to decide for themselves foster autonomy, trust, and innovation. This approach taps into intrinsic motivation—when people have ownership over their work, they’re often more engaged and creative. It’s especially effective in environments where flexibility and adaptability are valued.

However, too much autonomy without guidance can lead to confusion, misaligned priorities, and duplicated efforts. Not everyone feels comfortable making decisions without a framework, especially new or less confident team members.

Option B: Providing Clear Direction

On the other hand, leaders who clarify roles and responsibilities help ensure alignment, accountability, and efficiency. When everyone knows what’s expected, teams can focus, collaborate more smoothly, and avoid wasted time or misunderstandings. This style supports productivity, especially in high-pressure or complex situations.

But there’s a downside: if directions are too rigid or prescriptive, team members may feel micromanaged or stifled, leading to disengagement and missed opportunities for innovation.

Finding the Balance: Human-Centric Leadership

The most effective leaders balance both approaches. They provide clarity about goals, roles, and expectations while encouraging team members to use their judgment and creativity within that framework. This balance empowers individuals and drives productivity, while also fostering trust, engagement, and growth.

The key is clarity, which requires excellent communication skills and empathy when conveying information to the individual.

Leaders who aspire to lead a successful team, needs to get him self clarified first when it comes to expectations and deliverables.

Deliverables can be effectively defined using various tools such as the SMART framework (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound). However, setting expectations requires more than just defining deliverables; it demands a clear and detailed job description along with a well-articulated objective for the role. Only with this clarity can alignment between individual performance and organizational goals be ensured.

Often, team members are unable to see how their roles contribute to the organization’s broader goals. When this connection is clearly communicated, it significantly enhances both motivation and alignment. A clear line of sight between individual responsibilities and organizational outcomes fosters a stronger sense of purpose and accountability.

Parting insights 💭

A good leader doesn’t choose between clear direction and empowering autonomy—they blend both to bring out the best in their teams. By doing so, they create environments where people know what to do, feel trusted to make decisions, and are motivated to excel.

Happy reading. See you soon.