Riaz Bavakunji

“Survivorship bias” is a BIG problem in the leadership of change. It’s what happens when leaders & decision-makers focus only on the visible successes of a change process and ignore the many others who attempted similar strategies but failed. They put the “successes” on a pedestal and pay no attention to the critical failures. As a result, they & others overestimate the likelihood of success, make decisions based on incomplete data & end up generalising from small, unrepresentative samples of “success stories”. These factors make them more prone to future failure. How to avoid “survivorship bias”: 1) Realize that while the success of our role models can inspire our journey, it cannot define our journey. 2) For every success story that inspires us, we should look for similar choices that failed. 3) We might ask the questions, “What’s missing?” and “What am I not considering?” when making decisions based on a limited set of input, ideally with others who have different perspectives. 4) We should look at the big picture through data and trends; when we are fixated on a decision, it is very hard to see the broad trends on the topic. 5) We have to normalise talking about our setbacks; it reduces the stigma associated with failure and helps others learn from our failures. tanmayvora.com/what-is-survi…. Article & graphic by @TNVora.