Whether you run a team of three or a company of a thousand, whether you’re a founder negotiating with your co-founder or a manager navigating competing priorities - your job is to cut through the noise and move things forward.

The more responsibility you take on, the more decisions land on your desk - and the higher the stakes of each one. Your brain becomes your most critical business asset. It’s your sharpest tool in every strategy session, every crisis, every moment when people are waiting for you to decide.

The problem is, your brain wasn’t built for this.

This week, we’re diving into the bias that makes you think you’ve mastered a subject - when you’ve barely scratched the surface. Or worse: the one that stops you from seeing that you actually ARE the expert.

You think you’ve “got this”? That could kill your business.

You just binged three podcasts on LinkedIn personal branding. Experts breaking down their strategies, the algorithms, the formats that get traction. It’s all crystal clear. You get it.

“Honestly, it’s not that complicated. I’ll manage my LinkedIn myself - we don’t need an agency. Three posts a week, a carousel on Monday, some storytelling on Wednesday, an expertise post on Friday. Easy.”

Six months later: 47 posts published. Average engagement: 8 likes. Zero leads generated. Time invested: 2 hours a week you could have spent on your actual business.

Meanwhile, your competitor who hired someone who’s been doing this for 5 years is pulling in 15 qualified meetings a month through LinkedIn.

You just confused knowing the rules with mastering the game.

This didn’t happen because you’re arrogant or naive. It happened because your brain conflated two fundamentally different things: intellectual understanding and operational expertise.

You’re not alone

March 2020. The pandemic hits. And suddenly, everyone becomes an expert.

Virologists are giving economic advice on crisis management. Economists are explaining viral transmission. Politicians are weighing in on vaccine efficacy. Tech entrepreneurs are proposing epidemiological solutions.

All brilliant in their own fields. All convinced they had a handle on the topic because they’d read studies, listened to experts, grasped the basic mechanics.

This is what’s called ultracrepidarianism - offering opinions on subjects you don’t actually master. The word comes from the Latin ne supra crepidam - literally “not beyond the sandal.” The story goes back to Pliny the Elder: a shoemaker criticized a painting by the artist Apelles, pointing out an error in how a sandal was represented. Apelles corrected it. But when the shoemaker started critiquing the rest of the painting, Apelles stopped him: “Cobbler, not above the sandal.”

The Dunning-Kruger effect is exactly this: your brain can’t tell the difference between “I understand the concept” and “I can execute.” Between knowing the rules of tennis and making it to Roland-Garros.

The kicker? The smartest people fall into this trap most easily. Because they learn fast, grasp things fast - and confuse that speed of comprehension with mastery.

The Dunning-Kruger effect - what is it, exactly?

It’s a cognitive bias identified in 1999 by two American psychologists, David Dunning and Justin Kruger. Their study revealed something striking: the people least competent in a given domain are also the ones who most overestimate their abilities. And conversely, true experts tend to slightly underestimate their expertise.

Why? Because to accurately assess your own competence in a field, you need to already be competent in that field. It’s the snake eating its own tail.

How does it work?

Your lazy brain plays a nasty trick on you. When you discover a new subject and grasp the basics, your brain confuses “understanding the concepts” with “mastering the domain.”

The core problem? The skills you need to be good at something are the same skills you need to recognize that you’re not good at it.

If you don’t know how to play chess, you can’t evaluate whether your strategy is any good. If you don’t have a handle on marketing, you can’t judge whether your marketing plan is solid. This is called a metacognitive deficit: you don’t have the mental tools to measure your own gaps.

For a better picture of the phenomenon, researchers later modeled a learning curve in four phases:

The peak of “Mount Stupid” (unconscious incompetence): you don’t know what you don’t know, and you’re brimming with confidence.
The valley of despair: you realize how complex it actually is, your confidence collapses.
The slope of enlightenment: you make real progress, confidence gradually rebuilds.

The plateau of sustainability: you finally have a genuine handle on it, with realistic confidence.

The trap? Most people get stuck at the top of Mount Stupid. Because reaching true mastery takes years of effort, practice, and failure.

Three podcasts? That puts you at the summit. Not anywhere near the plateau.

When you’re a leader, this bias turns vicious

Because the Dunning-Kruger effect runs in both directions. And your isolation amplifies both.

First spiral: your overconfidence goes unchallenged

You venture into a new domain. You listen to experts, you read, you understand. Your brain tells you you’ve got it.

In a normal team, someone would say: “Are you sure about this?”

But you’re the leader. When you assert something with confidence, no one pushes back. Your team has learned: contradicting the boss is risky. Especially when you seem so certain.

The result? You can climb Mount Stupid in complete peace. Nobody to tell you you’re at the top. Nobody to help you find your way down into the valley of humility.

Second spiral: generalized expertise

Even more dangerous. You ARE an expert in your domain. You’ve spent 15 years on your sector. You know your product, your market, your customers.

And your brain makes a treacherous shortcut: “If I’m an expert at X, I must be competent at Y, Z, and W too.”

You’ve mastered tech? Your brain convinces you marketing is simple. You’re strong at strategy? Finance seems obvious. Your business is working? Team management can’t be that hard.

And no one around you says: “No - being exceptional at your core expertise doesn’t mean you’ve got everything else covered.”

Third spiral: the invisible underestimation

The flip side is just as dangerous. You ARE genuinely expert in your domain. But no one values it at its true worth. Because to you, it’s obvious. Simple. Basic.

You spend an hour dissecting a complex problem, find the solution in 20 minutes, and think: “Anyone could do this, right?”

No. They can’t.

But because you’re inside your own head, you don’t realize that this ability to see patterns, anticipate problems, find solutions - that’s your 15 years of expertise talking.

The result? You underprice your services. You don’t value what you bring. You think anyone could replace you.

Fourth spiral: the guru effect

The higher you are in the hierarchy, the more people treat you as an expert. On everything. And you’re at the very top.

People ask your opinion on website design. On HR strategy. On accounting software choices. On your LinkedIn comms.

And after being asked your opinion on everything long enough, your brain starts to believe you ARE an expert in everything.

You end up forgetting the difference between “having an opinion” and “having expertise.”

In my work with leaders facing this situation, I never start with “you’re wrong” or “you’re overestimating yourself.” I try to understand the logic behind their certainties.

Often I ask a simple question: “How did you develop this expertise?”

And the pattern surfaces.

“I listened to three podcasts with domain experts.” “I read two reference books.” “I talked with someone who’s been doing it for 10 years.” “I took a 6-hour online course.”

You see the problem? They don’t. Not yet.

Because in their mind, they did the work. They sought out the information. They understood the concepts. Their brain is telling them: “You learned, so you know.”

The turning point is when I ask: “OK, and how long did it take you to become truly expert in YOUR domain?”

Silence.

“15 years.” “8 years of intensive practice.” “Thousands of hours and dozens of failures.”

“And you think that after 6 hours of training, you’ve mastered a domain that took someone else 10 years of practice?”

That’s when it lands. Because verbalizing that dissonance is not the same as vaguely sensing it.

The reverse is equally fascinating. The leaders who underestimate their own expertise.

I ask them: “How long would it take you to train someone to do what you do?”

“Oh, 2-3 weeks max. It’s not that complicated.”

Then we break down together what they actually do. The micro-decisions. The patterns they spot instinctively. The problems they anticipate before they materialize. The solutions they find in 20 minutes that would take anyone else days.

And then: “Ah. It’s not that simple, is it.”

What changes everything in these sessions? Verbalizing it together.

Because alone in front of your screen, you don’t see these patterns. You don’t measure the gap between “understanding” and “mastering.” You don’t realize that what seems obvious to you is the product of 15 years of experience.

An outside perspective asks the questions you don’t ask yourself. Challenges what seems evident. Gives value to what you dismiss as ordinary.

And above all, it creates the space where you can say “I don’t know” without it threatening your credibility as a leader.

How to take back control

1. The transmission test

Before stepping into a new domain, ask yourself: “How long would it take me to train someone to do what I’m about to do?”

If you think 2 hours, but domain experts spend 2 years training their juniors - you’re probably at the top of Mount Stupid.

In my sessions with leaders, we go further. I ask: “Walk me through exactly what you’d do, step by step.” And at each step, we dig: “Why would you make that call? What are you basing it on? What could go wrong?”

Usually within 10 minutes, they realize they can’t answer half my questions. Because understanding the “what” doesn’t give you the “how” - and certainly not the “why.”

2. The reverse 10,000-hour rule

You know the 10,000-hour rule? It takes roughly 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become expert in a domain.

Flip the logic: count how many hours you’ve genuinely spent PRACTICING (not reading, not listening, PRACTICING) in this new domain.

3 podcasts at 45 minutes each = 2h15. An online course = 6h. Some reading = 10h. Total: roughly 18 hours of “practice” - and most of it is theory.

Most leaders try to solve this by... reading another book. Or listening to one more podcast. But that makes the problem worse, because it gives the illusion of progress while you stay at the same level of theoretical understanding.

With a Sparring Partner, we can press: “You say you understand marketing. Show me. Build me a strategy for your own business, right now.” And very quickly, the gaps become visible.

3. The humility benchmark

Identify 3 genuine experts in the domain you think you’ve mastered. Not influencers - real experts. People who’ve been practicing for 10+ years.

Read their content. Listen to them talk. Observe the level of nuance they bring, their ability to see grey zones, their hesitation in the face of certain questions.

If you have certainties where they have nuances - you’re probably overestimating your level.

Most leaders stop at the observation. In sessions, we go further: “What explains that they see complexity where you see simplicity? What do they know that you don’t?”

4. The confidence audit

List all the domains where you consider yourself competent. For each one, rate your confidence level from 1 to 10.

Then ask 3 people who know you well - and who’ll tell you the truth - to rate your actual level in those same domains.

The gap between the two scores shows you where Dunning-Kruger is hitting.

Alone, this exercise is uncomfortable but limited. In a session, we can explore: “Why this gap? What aren’t you seeing? And more importantly: in which domains are you UNDERESTIMATING yourself, while others see you as the expert?”

5. The expertise vs. opinion map

Draw two columns. Column 1: “I have demonstrated expertise” (10,000+ hours, proven results). Column 2: “I have an opinion” (I’ve read, listened, grasped the concepts).

Then look at your recent strategic decisions. How many came from Column 1? How many from Column 2?

If you’re making major business decisions from Column 2 - you have a problem.

In my engagements, we don’t stop at the map. We dig into each decision: “This marketing call - what was it based on? Your 15 years of experience in tech? Or three podcasts on growth hacking?”

6. The reverse delegation principle

If you wouldn’t delegate this task to a junior with the same level of training you have on the subject - why are you keeping it for yourself?

Example: you completed a 6-hour finance course. Would you hand your treasury management to someone with the same level as you? No? So why are you running it yourself?

Alone, this realization is already powerful. In a session with a Sparring Partner, we can go further: “OK, you’re going to delegate. To whom? How do you evaluate their real competence without falling into the same trap?”

My tips

The decision matrix by expertise level

Before every important decision, put it in one of three categories:

Green zone: my domain of expertise (10,000+ hours). I decide alone. Orange zone: I understand the concepts but don’t have the expertise. I consult a real expert before deciding. Red zone: I don’t have a handle on this. I delegate or I hire.

The trap? Most leaders put 80% of their decisions in the green zone. In a session with a Sparring Partner, you can challenge those classifications and identify the decisions you think are green - but are actually orange.

The predictions journal

Write down your hypotheses and predictions with a date. “I think that by doing X, I’ll get Y in 3 months.”

Re-read them 3 months later. You’ll be surprised at how often you were wrong - especially in the domains where you thought you had it covered.

In a session, you can dig into those recurring patterns: in what kinds of situations do you consistently get it wrong? What does that reveal about your blind spots?

The “I don’t know” rule

Force yourself to say “I don’t know” at least once a day. In meetings. In front of your team. In front of a client.

It protects you from Dunning-Kruger - and it creates a culture where others can say “I don’t know” without losing credibility.

Because if you, the leader, can never say “I don’t know” - how do you expect your team to dare?

The “obvious things” inventory

List everything that seems obvious to you in your business. Then ask someone external - a new hire, a client, a friend who doesn’t know your sector - to ask you questions about them.

You’ll discover that what seems simple to you is actually the product of 15 years of expertise. And that you’re probably undervaluing what you bring.

With a Sparring Partner, you can turn those “obvious things” into premium offers, training, high-value content. Because what’s obvious to you is precious to others.

This week’s challenge

This week, a two-part challenge.

Part 1: Find your “Mount Stupid”

Pick ONE domain where you’ve been making decisions recently, but where your expertise is limited. Marketing, finance, tech, HR - doesn’t matter.

Ask yourself three questions:

How many hours of real practice do I have in this domain? (Not reading - PRACTICE.) How long did it take real experts to master this domain? What have I actually been basing my recent decisions on in this domain?

If your answers are “15 hours,” “10 years,” and “my gut” - you’re probably at the summit.

Part 2: Find your “invisible valley”

Now flip it. Pick ONE domain where you ARE genuinely expert. Your core. What you’ve been doing for 10+ years.

Ask 3 people - team, clients, peers: “What do I do that seems difficult or impressive to you?”

You’ll be surprised. What feels “normal” to you is often what creates the most value. You don’t see it because it’s become unconscious.

The trap? You can do this exercise alone. But alone, you’ll minimize the results. “Oh, that’s nothing, anyone can do that.” No - they can’t.

If you want to actually see your blind spots, you know where to find me. Because sometimes you need someone in front of you to say: “No, what you’re doing there is not ‘normal.’ That’s expertise.”

The Dunning-Kruger effect is human

Your brain wasn’t built to distinguish “understanding a concept” from “mastering a domain.” It does what it can with the information it has.

And as a leader, you don’t have to face this alone.

You don’t have to become an expert in everything. You don’t have to master it all. You don’t have to have an answer for everything.

What matters is knowing where your zones of real expertise are - and where you just have an opinion.

That takes a bit of method. And sometimes, an outside perspective to see what you can’t see on your own.

Ready to take action? Book your discovery call: https://bit.ly/LBkBrief

Next week, we’ll talk about the bias that makes you prefer what already exists - even when it’s clearly the wrong option. And how this resistance to change can turn your business into a Titanic: you can see the iceberg coming, but you keep sailing straight because “changing course feels too risky.”

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Whether you run a team of three or a company of a thousand, whether you’re a founder negotiating with your co-founder or a manager navigating competing priorities - your job is to cut through the noise and move things forward.

The more responsibility you take on, the more decisions land on your desk - and the higher the stakes of each one. Your brain becomes your most critical business asset. It’s your sharpest tool in every strategy session, every crisis, every moment when people are waiting for you to decide.

The problem is, your brain wasn’t built for this.

This week, we’re diving into the bias that makes you think your product is obvious - when your customers don’t understand a thing. The trap? The more you master your subject, the less capable you become of seeing what’s blocking everyone else.

Think your product speaks for itself? That could kill your business.

2001: Dean Kamen unveils the Segway. Steve Jobs predicts it will be “as important as the PC.” Investment pours in. The product is brilliant.

The result? A monumental flop. Why? Because Kamen was so convinced the usefulness was obvious that he never explained what it was actually for.

Six years later, 2007: Drew Houston founds Dropbox. Technically superior cloud solutions already exist. But Drew makes a 3-minute video showing a folder syncing. That’s it. The waitlist goes from 5,000 to 75,000 sign-ups overnight.

While his competitors are explaining cloud architecture and security protocols, he just shows people what they’ll see: their files, everywhere, all the time.

Dropbox explodes. The others disappear.

The difference? Dean Kamen could no longer imagine what it was like to NOT understand his product. Drew Houston acted as if he was discovering the cloud for the first time.

This isn’t arrogance. It’s biology.

Dean Kamen isn’t an idiot. He’s a brilliant inventor who created revolutionary medical devices, including the iBOT, a wheelchair that climbs stairs. A man who holds over 1,000 patents.

And yet, he spent $100 million on a product nobody understood.

Not because he was stupid. Not because he was arrogant. Because his brain could literally no longer put itself in the shoes of someone who didn’t know what he knew.

When you spend 10 years developing a technology - living it, breathing it, perfecting it down to the smallest detail - your brain creates shortcuts. The utility becomes obvious. The benefits are clear. The workings are simple.

To you.

But for someone encountering the Segway for the first time? It’s a weird $5,000 scooter that goes 10 mph. Why wouldn’t I take my bike? Or a real scooter? Or my own legs?

Kamen could no longer ask those questions. He had forgotten that once, he didn’t know either.

Drew Houston did the opposite. He didn’t try to explain the technology. He showed the outcome: your file here, your file there, automatically. No jargon. No “cloud synchronization protocol.” Just: it works.

This happens because our brains are built to create automatisms. Once you know how to ride a bike, you can no longer understand why it was hard. Once you master your product, you can no longer see what’s blocking everyone else.

It’s not a character flaw. It’s human nature.

The curse of knowledge - what is it, exactly?

It’s the cognitive bias that makes you forget what it’s like not to know what you know.

Identified in 1989 by economists Colin Camerer, George Loewenstein, and Martin Weber, this bias describes a simple but devastating phenomenon: once you’ve mastered a piece of information, your brain becomes incapable of projecting itself into the mental state of someone who doesn’t have it.

You are literally cursed by your own expertise.

How does it work?

Your brain is an optimization machine. When you learn something new, it creates neural pathways, mental shortcuts that allow you to process information faster and faster.

At first, you have to think through every step. Then it becomes automatic. Then it becomes so automatic you no longer even remember there were steps.

That’s fantastic for becoming an expert. It’s catastrophic for explaining your expertise.

Because your brain has erased the staircase. You see the summit, and you no longer understand why others can’t just... be there.

Why does your brain do this?

Energy conservation. Your brain uses 20% of your total energy. It can’t afford to keep in memory all the details of how you learned everything you know.

So it tidies up. It keeps the result, it erases the process.

The problem? When you need to explain your product, your service, your vision to someone encountering it for the first time, you need the process. Not just the result.

And your brain has thrown it in the trash.

When you’re a leader, this bias gets even more insidious

The curse of knowledge affects everyone. But when you run a company, it becomes a risk multiplier.

Why? Because you’re the one who knows your product, your vision, your strategy best. You’re the ultimate expert. You live your business 24/7.

And because you’re at the top of the hierarchy, nobody dares tell you they don’t understand.

Your team has learned something fundamental: you don’t like basic questions.

Not because you’re unkind. But because when someone asks you to explain something that seems obvious to you, you project a micro-irritation. A small sigh. A “seriously?” in your eyes.

They saw it. Once. Twice. That was enough.

Now, they nod. They say “yes, got it.” They leave the meeting and make do with what they understood. Or what they think they understood.

You present your new product feature by talking about “the modular architecture that enables cross-platform scalability.” They nod. You’re reassured.

Except in their heads? They have no idea what you just said. But they’re not going to raise their hand. Not in front of everyone. Not in front of the CEO who seems so certain it’s obvious.

The result?

You build features nobody asked for because you never really explained the problem they solve. You create pitch decks that investors don’t understand because you skip the 15 steps that are obvious to you. You hire salespeople who can’t sell your product because your 2-minute pitch is incomprehensible to someone without your 5 years of expertise.

And the worst part? You don’t even know it. Because everyone tells you it’s clear.

Leadership isolation turns the curse of knowledge into a time bomb.

What I observe

In my engagements with leaders facing this kind of situation, I never start with “your pitch is incomprehensible.” I try to understand the logic behind their certainties.

Often, the conversation starts like this:

Me: “Explain your solution to me as if I were 12.”

The leader: “Oh, it’s simple! We do [technical jargon] with a [obscure concept] approach that enables [vague benefit].”

Me: “OK. And concretely, if I’m your client, what changes in my day?”

Silence.

Not because there’s no answer. But because the leader realizes he just jumped 47 mental steps between “our tech” and “the client benefit.” Steps so obvious to him he can no longer even see them.

What typically emerges is a fascinating pattern: they describe a revolutionary product, with cutting-edge tech, impressive features... but when I ask them “and your client, they don’t care about any of that, do they?” - I see the click.

They realize they spent 6 months explaining the “how” (the architecture, the tech, the features) without ever really explaining the “what” (what concretely changes for the user).

The “aha” moment comes when I point out:

“You’ve been talking to me for 10 minutes about your product. I can tell you how it works. But I still can’t tell you why someone should buy it.”

That hurts. But it’s necessary.

Because verbalizing those missing steps isn’t the same as staring at them alone in front of your pitch deck. The conversation guides that exploration of the blind spots you can no longer see.

I ask dumb questions. Things like “and what does that mean concretely?” or “OK but why does that matter?” Questions your team will never ask. Questions your clients are asking themselves but never formulate out loud.

And often, after an hour of dissecting, the leader tells me: “Fck, I’ve spent 3 years building this and I’ve never been able to explain it clearly.”*

Of course. You were too close. You knew too much. You needed someone who knows nothing to force you to rebuild the staircase your brain had erased.

How to regain control

1. The 12-year-old test

Explain your product to someone with zero knowledge of your sector. A friend, a family member, someone completely outside. If you need more than 3 technical terms to explain the value, you’re still cursed.

In my sessions with leaders, I push this exercise further. When they tell me “but my client understands the jargon,” I ask: “OK, and their boss who signs the budget - do they understand it too?” Often the answer is no. And that’s where we identify why deals stall at the decision stage.

2. Record yourself pitching

Film yourself or record yourself in audio explaining your product. Then listen back 48 hours later. It’ll hurt. That’s normal. You’ll hear all the logical jumps, all the jargon, all the missing steps.

The exercise works - but when we do it together, I can pause at every moment you lose a non-initiated listener. “There, you just said ‘cross-platform scalability’... can you translate that into a client benefit?” These questions reveal the recurring patterns you can’t see alone.

3. The “Before/After” in one sentence

Force yourself to describe your product using this structure: “Before, you did X which took Y time and caused Z problem. Now, you do A in B seconds without C problem.”

No tech. No features. Just the concrete change in your client’s life.

In my engagements, I challenge you on the “Before.” Often, leaders describe the problem they THINK the client has, not the one they actually have. “You’re telling me your client wastes time... but have you verified that’s THEIR priority problem or yours?”

4. The 3-level explanation rule

Prepare 3 versions of your pitch:

Version 1 (10 seconds): For the stranger in the elevator.
Version 2 (2 minutes): For the prospect who’s just discovering.
Version 3 (10 minutes): For the one who wants to understand how it works.

Most leaders only ever do version 3. All the time. To everyone.

When we work together, I help you identify the moment you jump from version 2 to version 3 when your listener hasn’t even understood version 1 yet. “You just lost your prospect. They wanted to know WHAT, not HOW.”

5. The junior sales rep test

Ask your most recently hired salesperson to explain your product to a fictitious prospect. Record the session. Listen to the hesitations, the approximations, the moments they struggle.

Those aren’t their weaknesses. They’re your blind spots. The places where YOUR explanation was insufficient because you skipped steps that were obvious to you.

In a session with a Sparring Partner, we go further: we analyze not just what they say, but what they avoid saying. “They never mentioned this supposedly essential feature... why? Because you never clearly explained WHY it was essential either.”

6. Systematic reverse brief

After every important presentation (investor pitch, product presentation, strategic meeting), ask 3 people: “Tell me back what you understood in one sentence.”

Don’t help them. Don’t rephrase. Just listen.

The gap between what you said and what they understood is the curse of knowledge in action.

This technique works well alone, but with an outside perspective, you can identify the patterns. When we analyze the answers together, I can show you: “Look - 3 people retained completely different things. None of them mentioned your main argument. What does that tell you about the clarity of your message?”

My tips

The “my grandmother” test: Before every important presentation, ask yourself: “Would my grandmother understand what I just said?” If the answer is no, simplify. This isn’t dumbing down your audience. It’s respecting the fact that they haven’t had your 5 years of immersion in the subject. And in a session with a Sparring Partner, you can identify the exact moments where you lose your imaginary grandmother.

The “why does this matter?” rule: After every technical statement, add a sentence that starts with “Which means...” You force your brain to make the connection between the feature and the benefit. Between the “how” and the “why it changes anything.” Simple to say, hard to do alone when you’re convinced the link is obvious.

The reverse pitch: Instead of explaining your product, ask your listener to describe their problem. Then rephrase it. Then ask “is that right?” Only then present your solution. You’ll start from where they are, not where you are. Easier said than done, and an outside perspective can help you spot when you’re diving back into expert jargon.

The acronym hunt: Make a list of every term you use naturally. API, SaaS, B2B, MVP, KPI... Every acronym is a warning signal. Replace them with full sentences for one week. You’ll hate it. That’s a good sign. And in an engagement, we can track together the acronyms you no longer even see as acronyms.

The weekly challenge

This week, a simple but uncomfortable challenge.

Pick a presentation you’ve already given 10 times. Your product pitch, your strategic vision, your investor deck. Something you’ve completely mastered.

Now present it to someone who knows NOTHING about your sector. A friend from a different field. A family member. Someone completely outside.

With one rule: you are not allowed to use a single technical term without explaining it in plain language immediately after.

Time yourself. Note every time you see your listener’s eyes glaze over. Every time they nod without really understanding. Every time you say “you see what I mean?” to fill a gap in your explanation.

At the end, ask them: “Tell me in one sentence what I do.”

The gap between what you wanted to say and what they understood is the exact measure of your curse of knowledge.

And if you want to go further - if you want to identify the patterns you can’t see alone - you know where to find me.

Because sometimes, you need someone who asks the dumb questions nobody dares ask you anymore.

The curse of knowledge is human.

And as a leader, you don’t have to face it alone.

The more expert you become, the more you naturally drift away from the beginner’s perspective. That’s not a flaw. It’s the price of mastery.

But when you’re alone at the top of the pyramid, when nobody dares say “I don’t understand,” this curse becomes invisible. You no longer even know you’re skipping steps.

It takes a little method. And sometimes, someone who isn’t afraid to ask the questions everyone is thinking but nobody says out loud.

Ready to take action? Book your discovery call: https://bit.ly/LBkBrief

Next week, we’ll talk about the Dunning-Kruger effect - that moment when you’re so convinced you’ve mastered a subject that you don’t even realize how much you’re missing the essential. And how, as a leader, that overconfidence can cost you far more than any technical mistake.

Leave a comment

Whether you run a team of three or a company of a thousand, whether you’re a founder negotiating with your co-founder or a manager navigating competing priorities - your job is to cut through the noise and move things forward.

The more responsibility you take on, the more decisions land on your desk - and the higher the stakes of each one. Your brain becomes your most critical business asset. It’s your sharpest tool in every strategy session, every crisis, every moment when people are waiting for you to decide.

The problem is, your brain wasn’t built for this.

This week, we’re diving into the bias that turns your recent experiences into absolute truths: availability bias.

You’re flying on buzz, not on stats

You just lost a big prospect. A €200k deal slipping through your fingers. Reason: “Your solution is too expensive.”

You hang up. You stare at your pricing table. And your brain starts spiraling.

“If he thinks we’re too expensive, everyone else will think the same. We need to rethink our entire pricing. We’re going to lose every deal.”

You know you’ve won 8 deals out of 10 over the last three months with this exact pricing. But when a recent failure is still haunting you, when you have to explain to the board why that big contract didn’t close, and the pressure is mounting to adjust your strategy - your brain goes looking for evidence that confirms what the failure is screaming at it.

“We’re too expensive. It’s obvious. We need to cut prices.”

This isn’t your fault. It’s psychology.

September 2001. The 9/11 attacks have just hit the United States. The images are playing on loop. The fear of flying becomes visceral.

The result? Millions of Americans stop flying for months. They choose to drive instead. Because driving feels safer. More controllable.

German psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer counted: 1,500 additional road deaths in the year that followed. People who died because they avoided flying - statistically far less dangerous than driving.

This didn’t happen because these people were stupid. Or irrational. It happened because when your brain has images of crashing planes on loop, when the media talks about nothing else, and fear is everywhere - your brain evaluates risk based on what comes easily to mind. Not on actual statistics.

Your brain works with what it has at hand. And what it has at hand is rarely objective reality.

Availability bias - what is it, exactly?

It’s the very human tendency to judge the probability of an event based on how easily examples come to mind. The easier it is to recall, the more frequent we think it is. The more striking, the more probable it seems.

The bias was identified by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in the 1970s - two psychologists who spent their careers dissecting the mental shortcuts that make us glitch.

How does it work?

Your lazy brain uses a shortcut: “If I can easily recall examples of X, then X must be common.” Logical - in theory. The problem? What comes easily to mind has nothing to do with actual frequency. It depends on:

What’s recent (your last commercial failure weighs heavier than your previous eight wins). What’s emotional (a demo that humiliated you stays burned in memory - not the 20 successful demos). What’s in the media (you hear about your competitor’s €10M raise, not the 50 companies that quietly folded). What’s spectacular (shark attacks make headlines, not the 500 deaths by hippo).

Your brain does this to save energy. Going to find the real stats takes work. Trusting what comes to mind is easy.

Isolation amplifies everything

When you’re a leader, this bias gets even more insidious.

Success stories hide reality

You read everywhere that your competitor raised €10M by going aggressive with freemium. You see LinkedIn posts from founders exploding their growth. You hear about the company that tripled its ARR in six months.

What you don’t see? The 50 companies that tried the same freemium model and burned through their cash. The founders who failed and stopped posting. The companies that folded quietly.

The higher you are in the hierarchy, the less people dare show you the failures. Your team talks about the wins, rarely the defeats. The media celebrates unicorns, not the 95% that disappear.

You’re flying with a distorted dashboard

The result? You make strategic decisions based on what’s buzzing, not on statistical reality. You overestimate spectacular risks and underestimate the real invisible dangers. You copy the strategies of success stories without seeing the bodies on the side of the road.

What I observe

In my sessions with leaders, what strikes me most about availability bias is how convinced they are that they have a complete picture. They’ve analyzed. They have numbers. They’ve thought it through. And yet...

The lost prospect that paralyzes

A CEO contacts me because he’s considering overhauling his entire pricing strategy. He just lost a big deal - €200k - on a price objection. “It’s clear, we’re too expensive. We need to cut our rates.”

I ask him: “Out of your last ten deals, how many did you win?”

“Eight.”

“And out of those 8 wins, how many negotiated on price?”

Silence.

“Three. But we held firm.”

“So you won 8 deals out of 10 with this pricing. And you want to rethink everything because of the one you lost?”

What typically emerges is a fascinating pattern: he describes a coherent thought process, grounded in real data... but one that systematically excludes positive signals. The recent failure has taken up all the space. The 8 wins? Invisible in his analysis.

The “aha” moment comes when I point out: “You’ve been talking to me about that lost deal for 15 minutes. You mentioned your eight wins in one sentence. Do you see the imbalance?”

The success story that blinds

A founder tells me she wants to pivot to aggressive freemium. Her competitor just raised €10M with that model. “It’s working for them, it’ll work for us.”

I ask her: “How many companies in your sector have tried freemium in the last three years?”

“I don’t know... A few?”

“And how many succeeded?”

She thinks. “Right now, off the top of my head, I can think of two.”

“And how many failed?”

Long silence.

“I don’t know. Nobody talks about them.”

Exactly. Failures are invisible. Success stories make noise. You’re flying on buzz, not on real stats.

The turnover that distorts everything

A leader has had two resignations back to back. He’s convinced he has a generalized HR problem. “We need to rethink everything: salaries, culture, management.”

“Why did these two people leave?”

“One relocated for family reasons. The other joined a company in a different sector.”

“So neither had anything to do with your culture or management?”

“No, but still... Two departures in one month is a lot.”

“Out of how many people on your team?”

“Fifteen.”

Two recent, emotionally charged departures have erased the thirteen people who are still there and still engaged. Availability bias turns two isolated cases into a sweeping trend.

Because verbalizing these patterns isn’t the same as staring at them alone in front of your dashboard. The conversation guides that exploration of blind spots. It asks the questions that put things back in perspective. That challenge what comes “easily to mind” against what’s statistically real.

How to regain control

1. Keep a decision journal with real outcomes

Log your important decisions along with the reasons behind them. Three months later, compare your predictions with reality. You’ll quickly see which types of events you systematically overestimate (spectacular risks) and which you underestimate (the real silent dangers).

In my sessions, we go further. We analyze the patterns in your prediction errors together. Why do you always overestimate the impact of a competitor that’s getting media attention? Why do you consistently underestimate internal execution problems? These patterns reveal your specific blind spots.

2. Force yourself to look for counter-examples

Before every major strategic decision, ask yourself: “What am I not seeing?” If you want to copy your competitor’s freemium strategy after their €10M raise, actively search for companies that tried it and failed. They exist. They’re just invisible because they don’t make noise.

The exercise works - but when we do it together in a session, I can push on the counter-examples you mention quickly and then brush aside. “You just said ‘some companies tried it without success’... which ones exactly? Why didn’t it work for them? What makes you think you’re different?”

3. Build a “base rate” system

For each decision, document the real success rates in your sector. Fundraising? Six to nine months on average. Feature launch? 15-20% adoption in the first three months. Hiring a senior sales rep? Six months before real productivity.

These numbers protect you. They don’t guarantee anything for your specific case, but they recalibrate your expectations.

In my engagements, we use these base rates as a starting point for the conversation, not as absolute truth. “The market says six months. You’re saying two months. What makes you different?” And then we can really dig into whether your optimism is grounded in real advantages - or in availability bias (or possibly optimism bias).

4. Apply the “48-hour rule”

After an emotionally charged event - a lost deal, a key resignation, an article praising your competitor - ban yourself from making any strategic decision for 48 hours. Let the emotion settle. The event will still be there, but its relative weight in your analysis will shrink.

The technique works, but it has its limits when you practice it alone. Because after 48 hours, the bias is still there - just a little cooler. In a session, we can explore why this particular event hit you so hard. “This failed demo has been haunting you for a week. What did it touch in you? Why does it take up more space than the 20 successful demos before it?”

5. Build a “stats board”

Identify two or three people in your network who have access to broad data about your market. Not cheerleaders. People who can tell you: “Your case isn’t unique. Here’s what usually happens.”

A VC who has seen 200 fundraises. A former employee of a competitor who knows the real numbers. A consultant who’s been working in your sector for ten years.

This council gives you access to data your brain can’t easily recall - because you’ve never lived it yourself.

The approach is solid, but when we work together, I become that outside perspective who has seen patterns repeat. I can tell you: “The last three leaders I worked with all wanted to pivot after losing a big deal. None of them should have. Here’s why your case seems different to me... or maybe not.”

6. Compare the “base case” to the “exceptional case”

For every decision, ask yourself: “Am I betting on the base case (what statistically happens most of the time) or the exceptional case (what could happen if everything aligns)?”

If you’re betting on the exceptional, it might be availability bias talking. The success stories you see everywhere are exceptional by definition.

In my sessions, we dig into that distinction. “You’re telling me your product is going to take off because you have one enthusiastic early adopter. Is that the exceptional case or the base case? What are you basing your generalization on?”

My tips

The “shark vs. hippo” test: Before making a decision based on a perceived risk, ask yourself: “Am I afraid of the shark (spectacular but rare) or the hippo (invisible but deadly)?” Sharks kill about 10 people per year worldwide. Hippos? 500. But everyone is afraid of sharks. In a session with a Sparring Partner, you can identify your “business sharks” - the risks that make noise but aren’t your real dangers.

The magic question: Before every important decision, ask yourself: “If I had to bet €10,000 of my own money on this prediction, would I stick with my estimate?” Real money instantly recalibrates your brain. It becomes much harder to be swayed by the last striking event when it’s your own cash on the line. And in a session, we can dig into: “Why are you suddenly hesitating? What changes when the stakes get personal?”

The false alarm journal: Note every time you’ve overestimated a risk or underestimated an opportunity because of a recent event. Reread it before your next strategic decisions. You’ll recognize your patterns. And with an outside perspective in a session, you can turn those patterns into an early warning system: “Careful - you’re doing exactly what you did three months ago.”

The weekly challenge

Want to really test whether you’re subject to availability bias?

Pick ONE strategic decision you need to make this week or this month. Something important. A key hire. A product pivot. A pricing revision. A marketing investment.

Now take two hours this week to actively look for the data your brain isn’t showing you spontaneously.

Not the success stories that are buzzing. Not the last failure that’s haunting you. The real stats.

If you want to copy a strategy, find the companies that tried it and failed. If you want to avoid a risk, look up its actual frequency - not its media visibility. If you want to generalize a customer signal, find out how many customers actually think the same thing.

Now compare your two analyses: the one you had “spontaneously” and the one based on complete data. The differences reveal your blind spots.

If they’re significant, availability bias is driving your decisions more than you think.

And if you can’t do this exercise alone? That’s exactly why I exist.

You know where to find me.

Availability bias isn’t a flaw

It’s a survival reflex miscalibrated for the modern business world.

Your ancestors who easily remembered recent dangers survived. Those who had to analyze statistics before reacting to the saber-toothed tiger... less so.

Your brain still runs on that same wiring. It prefers what comes easily to mind over going to find the real data. It prefers recent, emotional examples over cold statistics. It prefers what makes noise over what’s real.

This isn’t your fault. It’s psychology.

But you don’t have to face this trap alone. Because what neutralizes availability bias isn’t just willpower or good resolutions. It’s an outside perspective. Someone who asks “What are you really basing this on?” before you charge ahead.

Ready to take action? Book your discovery call: https://bit.ly/LBkBrief

Next week, we’ll talk about the bias that makes you think your product is obvious when your customers don’t understand a thing - and how the more you master your subject, the less capable you become of seeing what’s blocking everyone else.

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Whether you run a team of three or a company of a thousand, whether you’re a founder negotiating with your co-founder or a manager navigating competing priorities - your job is to cut through the noise and move things forward.

The more responsibility you take on, the more decisions land on your desk - and the higher the stakes of each one. Your brain becomes your most critical business asset. It’s your sharpest tool in every strategy session, every crisis, every moment when people are waiting for you to decide.

The problem is, your brain wasn’t built for this.

This week, we’re diving into the bias that turns your legitimate need to move forward into unproductive frenzy: action bias.

Doing and undoing - it’s all just staying busy

You check your to-do list at the end of the day. 17 tasks crossed off. Three meetings run. Two projects launched. You’ve worked. Really worked. So why this nagging feeling that nothing actually moved forward?

This morning, in your leadership meeting, someone said: “We’re drowning in client requests - we need a new CSM.”

And what did you say? “OK, let’s start recruiting this week.”

No questions about the current process. No documentation of what’s actually breaking down. No reflection on why the existing team is overwhelmed.

Just: action (or reaction?). Because doing something feels reassuring. Because hiring is visible. Because doing nothing would look like paralysis.

Welcome to the action bias trap.

Before you beat yourself up

This reflex is deeply human.

This is the moment I explain the header image for this edition. In 2007, psychologist Michael Bar-Eli and his team analyzed 286 penalty kicks across elite world championships and leagues. The result? Goalkeepers dive left or right in 94% of cases.

Makes sense, right?

Except the statistics are clear: their chances of stopping the shot are significantly higher if they stay in the center. When the goalkeeper stays still in the middle, they stop around 60% of shots aimed at the center. When they dive the right way? Under 30%.

So why do they dive anyway?

Because staying still looks like inaction. If the ball goes in and you didn’t move, you look passive. Incompetent. Like you gave up. But if you dive and the ball goes in anyway? At least you “gave it everything.”

That’s exactly what happens in your office. Your brain prefers visible action over strategic inaction. Even when inaction would be objectively more effective.

This isn’t weakness. It’s neurological wiring that kept your ancestors alive for millennia. When faced with danger, those who moved survived. Those who thought too long... less so.

Doing something, whatever the cost

Action bias - what is it, exactly?

Theorized in the early 2000s by researchers Anthony Patt and Richard Zeckhauser, then studied in depth by psychologist Michael Bar-Eli in 2007 through the football analysis described above, action bias describes our systematic tendency to prefer doing something over doing nothing - even when inaction would be the better decision.

How does it work?

Your brain hates emptiness. It hates waiting. It hates reflection that doesn’t immediately translate into visible movement.

Why? Because acting releases dopamine. Checking a box on your to-do list feels good (admit it - sometimes you add something you already did, just to cross it off, right?). Announcing a decision calms your anxiety. Launching a project gives you the feeling of being in control.

Your lazy brain has learned a simple shortcut: action = resolution. Even when it’s false. Even when the action makes the problem worse.

The trap? Your brain confuses activity with impact. It confuses productive with effective.

You can be ultra-productive on your to-do list and completely ineffective in your business. You can check 30 boxes a day and make your company go backwards. You can run in all directions... and go nowhere.

Why it’s even worse when you’re deciding alone

Action bias hits everyone. But it’s even more toxic when you’re a leader.

Because nobody will challenge your compulsive need to “do something.”

Your team sees you’re under pressure. That the board wants results. That investors want to see movement. So when you propose acting fast, they nod. Even if they have doubts.

You’re surrounded, but nobody dares say: “What if we took two days to really understand the problem before we move?”

Worse: your environment rewards action. Leaders who “make decisions quickly” get celebrated. Who “aren’t afraid to call it.” Who “make things happen.”

Nobody celebrates the person who spent three weeks diagnosing before acting. Even if their action was ten times more effective.

The result? You confuse speed with haste. You confuse decision with reflex. You confuse leadership with frenzy.

Inevitably, it shows up concretely in your daily life.

The reflexive hire

Your CS team is drowning. Client requests are piling up. In your leadership meeting, someone drops: “We need a new CSM.”

And you? You say “OK” before asking a single question.

No documentation of the current process. No analysis of what’s actually breaking. No reflection on why your current team is overwhelmed.

You hire. Because hiring is visible. It’s actionable. It’s reassuring.

The result? Six months later, you have one more CSM... who’s struggling just as much as the others. Because the problem wasn’t headcount. It was your broken client process. Your misconfigured CRM. Your nonexistent onboarding.

You added chaos to chaos.

The passion project feature

You come out of a lunch with an investor - a former founder you respect. He mentions: “You should add a personalized push notification feature. All my portfolio companies that did it exploded their engagement.”

Monday morning, you brief your CTO: “We’re building push notifications. Top priority.”

No analysis of your own usage data. No user interviews. No concept testing. Just: immediate action.

Three months of dev later, the feature is live. Adoption rate? 3%. Because your users never asked for it. They just wanted the Excel export to work properly.

But at least you “did something.”

The rescue reorganization

Sales results have been stagnant for two quarters. Pressure is mounting. The board wants to see movement.

You decide to reorganize the entire commercial structure. Centralize what was decentralized. Change territories. Modify targets. Hire a new Sales Director.

Six months of chaos. Widespread frustration. And the numbers? Still no better.

Because the real problem wasn’t the organization. It was your product no longer matching the market. A clever new competitor with a differentiated positioning. Your pricing that had drifted out of touch.

But thinking through all that takes time. It’s uncomfortable. It doesn’t look like action.

So you reorganized. Again and again.

What I observe

When I work with leaders caught in this trap, the first thing I do is slow down.

Not for the pleasure of slowing down. But because speed often hides the absence of clarity.

I ask them: “What are you really trying to solve?” And in 8 out of 10 cases, the first answer isn’t the right one. It’s framed in terms of solution (“We need to hire,” “We need to pivot”) - not in terms of problem.

So we dig. Together.

“Your CS team is overwhelmed. OK. But overwhelmed by what exactly? Technical support requests? Clients who don’t understand the product? Recurring bugs? Poor onboarding?”

The answer changes everything. Because if it’s technical support, hiring a CSM does nothing. You need to improve your documentation or strengthen your product team. If it’s poor onboarding, hiring before fixing the process will just multiply the chaos.

What emerges in these conversations is often that the proposed action solves a symptom, not the cause.

And the leader knows it. Somewhere, deep down, he knows it. But he’s alone facing the pressure. Alone facing a board that wants results. Alone facing a team waiting for decisions.

So she acts. Because acting is reassuring. Even when it’s ineffective.

My role? Give you the space to slow down without guilt. To diagnose without pressure. To separate the urgent from the structural.

Because when you’re alone, your brain will always choose visible action over invisible reflection. That’s human. That’s neurological. It’s not weakness.

But with a Sparring Partner, you can afford to ask the right questions before moving. You can challenge your reflexes without feeling passive. You can distinguish “doing something” from “doing the thing that will actually have an impact.”

And that’s not a framework you can apply alone. It’s a conversation. A shared thinking process. The ability to see your blind spots while they’re trying to blind you.

How to escape the trap (spoiler: it’s harder than it sounds)

1. Distinguish “doing” from “moving forward”

Most leaders try to solve this by doing more things. But the real problem is that they confuse movement with progress.

Before acting, ask yourself one simple question: “If I do this, what changes structurally in my business?”

If the answer is “nothing, but at least I’ll have done something” - you’re falling into the trap.

With a Sparring Partner? That question becomes a conversation. Because alone, you’ll always find a justification to act. Together, we pick apart whether the proposed action actually solves the problem or just your need to move.

2. Build in a mandatory decision delay

The obvious solution would be to tell yourself to “take more time to think.” But without a precise framework, you’ll just ruminate for days while staying in the same state of mental urgency.

What actually helps? A simple rule: for any decision involving more than €10K or more than 100 hours of team time, wait 48 hours between the proposal and the green light.

Not to procrastinate. To let your brain exit reflex mode.

With a Sparring Partner? Those 48 hours become a structured reflection space. We use that time to dig into the real problem - not just to delay the decision.

3. Ask “What happens if I do nothing?”

You’re smart enough to recognize action bias at work. But recognition doesn’t equal neutralization, because your brain will still push you to act.

What works? Invert the question. Instead of “What do I need to do?”, ask yourself “What is the real cost of inaction for 2 weeks?”

Often, the cost is far lower than that of a bad, rushed action.

With a Sparring Partner? We quantify that cost together, without sugarcoating. Because alone, you’ll either minimize the risk to justify waiting, or exaggerate it to justify acting. Together, we see more clearly.

4. Document before you hire

Even knowing this pattern, you’ll still fall into it when someone says “We need someone.” Because hiring looks like a solution. Note that if you respond by automating with an AI agent, you’re still falling into the trap...

The real question? “If this person showed up tomorrow, what exactly would they do, with which tools, following which process?” (to adapt in the case of an AI agent, which is less adaptable and resourceful than a human who can find workarounds...)

If you can’t answer in detail, you don’t need to hire. You need to get clear.

With a Sparring Partner? We don’t just document. We challenge the actual need. “Does this hire solve the structural problem or just a symptom?” Often the conversation reveals that you first need to fix a process, or automate a step, before adding someone.

5. Measure impact, not activity

Most leaders track what they do (meetings held, decisions made, projects launched). But that doesn’t measure effectiveness.

What changes the game? Measuring the business impact of each major action 3 months later. Did this reorg increase sales? Did this feature improve retention?

If the answer is no, your brain will gradually learn to pump the brakes on reflex actions.

With a Sparring Partner? We define the right indicators together BEFORE the action. And we meet again 3 months later to analyze the results without complacency. That regular feedback loop recalibrates your decision-making instinct.

My Sparring Partner tips

The Freeze Frame

In my sessions, I use a simple but devastatingly effective technique: the “Freeze Frame.”

When a leader tells me “I need to...”, I interrupt. Politely, but firmly.

“Stop. Before you tell me what needs to be done, tell me what you observe.”

Nine times out of ten, there’s been no observation. Just a reflex. A need to act that short-circuits the analysis.

So we go back. We break down the facts, separate data from interpretation, distinguish the urgent from the structural.

I also ask this question a lot: “If you did nothing for 3 weeks, what would the realistic worst-case scenario be?”

Not the imaginary catastrophe scenario. The realistic worst case.

Often, the answer reveals that the urgency is emotional, not factual. That the pressure comes more from a need for control than from real business risk.

The Added Chaos Test

I ask: “Will this action simplify the system or add complexity?”

Hiring someone without a clear process? Added complexity. Launching a feature without validating the need? Added complexity. Reorganizing without a diagnosis? Added complexity.

The action that seems productive can be the one driving you into a deeper hole. And when you’re alone, you don’t see it. Because your brain is too busy justifying why “this time it’s different.”

That’s what Sparring is. Not giving you advice. Giving you the space to find your clarity again.

This week’s challenge

This week, I’m giving you a simple but uncomfortable challenge:

Identify one action that’s been on your to-do list for more than a week. An action that seems “important” and “urgent.”

Now ask yourself these three questions:

What am I really trying to solve? (The problem, not the solution) If I do nothing for 2 weeks, what is the real cost? (Quantified, factual) Does this action simplify my system or add chaos?

If after these three questions the action still seems relevant: go for it.

If it suddenly seems less obvious: good. You just outmaneuvered your action bias.

And if you can’t answer these questions clearly on your own? That’s exactly why I exist.

You know where to find me.

Action bias isn’t a flaw.

It’s a survival reflex miscalibrated for the modern business world.

Your ancestors who acted fast when faced with danger survived. Those who thought too long... less so.

Your brain still runs on that same wiring. It prefers visible action over strategic inaction. It prefers checking boxes to solving problems. It prefers moving to diagnosing.

That’s not your fault. It’s biology.

But you don’t have to face this trap alone. Because what neutralizes action bias isn’t willpower. It’s conversation. An outside perspective. Someone who asks “Why?” before you make your move.

Ready to take action? Book your discovery call: https://bit.ly/LBkBrief

Next week, we’ll talk about availability bias - the mechanism that makes you take decisions based on what comes easily to mind rather than reality, and why your last failed attempt at convincing a prospect might be distorting your entire product strategy.

Whether you run a team of three or a company of a thousand, whether you’re a founder negotiating with your co-founder or a manager navigating competing priorities - your job is to cut through the noise and move things forward.

The more responsibility you take on, the more decisions land on your desk - and the higher the stakes of each one. Your brain becomes your most critical business asset. It’s your sharpest tool in every strategy session, every crisis, every moment when people are waiting for you to decide.

The problem is, your brain wasn’t built for this.

This week, we’re diving into the bias that pushes leaders to see the future through rose-tinted glasses: systematic optimism.

This raise is going to close fast! (Spoiler: no.)

You just kicked off your fundraise. Series A, three million, you’ve already met three interested VCs, the first conversations are going great. You tell your board: “Eight weeks max, we close by early December.”

You know the market stats: a raise takes six to nine months on average. But yours is different. Your product is gaining traction, your numbers are solid, VCs are coming to you. You even have a term sheet practically ready.

“For us it’s different, our momentum is exceptional.”

Three months later, you’re still in negotiations. Due diligence is dragging. One VC pulls out. Another wants different terms. Your runway is shrinking. Your stress is climbing. And you have to explain to the board why it’s taking longer than planned.

If you keep planning with rose-tinted glasses purely because you think the rules don’t apply to you, you’re caught in optimism bias.

Welcome to the wonderful world where “this time will be different” always ends the same way.

A textbook case

In 1985, Coca-Cola made the most optimistic decision in its history: replacing its original formula with “New Coke.”

They tested everything. 200,000 blind taste tests. New Coke consistently beat both Pepsi and the original formula. The numbers were there, the math was airtight. CEO Roberto Goizueta was convinced: “This is the best business decision we have ever made.”

On April 23, 1985, Coca-Cola announced the replacement of its historic formula. The optimism was total: they were finally going to win the taste war against Pepsi.

What happened next? An absolute disaster. Consumers - particularly in the South, Coca’s home turf - were furious. Phone lines were jammed. Advocacy groups formed to “save” the original formula. Fidel Castro called it “a sign of American imperialism.” Psychiatrists weighed in on the concept of “collective grief.”

79 days later, Coca-Cola relaunched the original formula under the name “Coca-Cola Classic.” New Coke lingered for another fifteen or so years, but never achieved the expected success.

When 200,000 tests tell you you’re right, your brain becomes expert at minimizing what doesn’t fit the picture - like the focus groups where a few disappointed voices had timidly surfaced. The taste was better in blind tests, yes. But they had underestimated people’s emotional attachment to “their” Coca-Cola. They had overestimated consumer rationality. They had believed the numbers were enough.

Roberto Goizueta wasn’t stupid. He was caught in the most natural trap in the world: believing that this time, with this data, it was going to work.

You’re seeing the future in rose

Optimism bias - what is it, exactly?

It’s that very human tendency to overestimate your chances of success and underestimate the obstacles. Put simply: you think YOUR project is going to beat the market statistics. That YOUR users will be different. That YOU won’t fall into the classic traps.

The bias was identified by Neil Weinstein in 1980 - so this isn’t new: it’s what drives 90% of entrepreneurs to think they’ll be among the 10% who make it.

How does it work?

Your brain - that relentless optimist - prefers positive scenarios. It smooths out friction, inflates probabilities, and plans as if everything will unfold without a hitch.

You focus on signals that confirm your ambitious narrative and dismiss the ones that don’t fit. You tell yourself a compelling story - “we’re going to change the way people work” - and you end up believing it.

Result: you make optimistic bets by default, without a realistic foundation, and without guardrails.

Spoiler: nothing ever goes as planned, especially when “as planned” means “in a perfect world.”

Optimism bias is the one that inspired the phrase: man plans, God laughs.

Isolation amplifies everything

As a leader, this bias becomes even more insidious.

You end up believing your own pitch

You’ve been selling the optimistic vision to your Business Angels for months. “The raise will be fast, our traction is exceptional.” You’ve repeated it in team meetings. You’ve written it in investor updates. And now... you genuinely believe it.

After pitching the rosy scenario enough times, you’ve erased the nuance. The “probablys” have become “certainlys.” The “if all goes well” has disappeared. You’re no longer projecting a best case - you’re convinced it’s the only case.

Optimism becomes a leadership posture

Showing doubt means showing weakness. You know that. Your team needs confidence. Your investors want conviction. Your clients want stability.

So you project optimism. You say “we’re going to get there.” You downplay the obstacles. And gradually, you’re not performing anymore - you genuinely believe it. Because the alternative, admitting uncertainty, feels impossible in your role as a leader.

Investor pressure pushes you toward optimism

They gave you money based on your projections. You owe them confidence. So when you present the roadmap, you’re naturally optimistic. “Q1 we launch the feature, Q2 we scale, Q3 we raise the Series A.”

You’re not lying. You sincerely believe it’s realistic. But you’re not building any friction into your plan. Because presenting a plan full of “maybes” and “if this works” looks amateur.

You compare your “best case” with everyone else’s “average”

You know raises take six to nine months on average. But you tell yourself: “The others didn’t have our traction. We already have a pipeline of interested VCs. We’ve proven our market fit.”

You’re comparing your ideal scenario against everyone else’s statistical average. And of course, you come out ahead. Not out of arrogance - out of logical optimism. Except everyone else thought they were above average too.

What I observe

In my work with leaders facing this kind of situation, I never start with “you’re wrong, that’s too optimistic.” I try to understand the logic behind their certainties.

When a CEO tells me “This raise is going to close in two months, I already have four interested VCs,” my first question isn’t “And if it takes six months?” It’s: “Walk me through why you think it’ll be faster than average.”

What usually emerges is a fascinating pattern: they lay out a coherent argument, grounded in real elements - their traction, their early conversations, their network. But one that systematically excludes friction. Not out of dishonesty. Out of protective optimism. And then, fairly quickly in our conversation, they say the magic words: “But for us it’s different.”

They know the benchmarks. They know raises take time. They’ve read the articles. But they’re convinced their situation is different. That the statistics don’t apply to them.

The “aha” moment comes when I ask: “You just told me that’s an optimistic estimate... by how much?”

Silence. Because they’ve never quantified their optimism. They’ve never put a number on “how much above average do I think I’ll be.”

When I ask: “If the average is seven months, and you’re saying two months, that means you think you’ll be 3.5 times faster than average. What’s that based on - what makes you think you’ll be 250% more effective than every other founder who’s raised before you?”

That’s when it gets interesting. Because framed that way, the optimism becomes measurable. And often excessive.

In those conversations, the real underlying question usually surfaces: “If I admit this is going to take longer, what does that say about my ability to deliver?” The fear that realistic optimism will be read as a lack of ambition.

Because admitting your raise is going to take seven months instead of two isn’t just adjusting a timeline. It’s calling into question the judgment of a leader who told the board two months.

How to take back control

1. Mandatory external benchmarks

Find three credible comparables - similar maturity, sector, ICP - and look at their actual numbers. Base rates apply to you too, even if your story is compelling.

Examples: average raise durations in your sector and at your stage. Feature adoption rates in your category. Real onboarding timelines for new clients.

Don’t just read the benchmarks. Write them down. Post them somewhere visible. And ask yourself: “What would specifically allow me to be twice as fast as the median?” If you don’t have a structural answer (not just “we’re more motivated”), you’re probably too optimistic.

The exercise works well, but when we run it together in session, I can push back on the justifications you give for why you’d be different. “You’re telling me your team is more efficient... based on what? Have you measured your velocity against comparable companies?”

2. The 3-scenario rule

For every significant project, map out three scenarios before you launch: best case, likely case, worst case. With precise numbers and probabilities.

Fundraising example:

Best case: 2 months, €2M at your target terms (probability: 15%) Likely case: 7 months, €1.5M with some concessions (probability: 60%) Worst case: bridge required (probability: 25%)

Force yourself to put probabilities on them. It moves you from “I hope” to “statistically.”

The trap is that we tend to treat “best case” as our default plan. In sessions, we work together to make sure your action plan is built on the “likely case,” not the “best case.” “If you’re planning your runway around a two-month raise when the probable scenario is seven months... we have a problem.”

3. The outside perspective

A sparring partner is a sounding board with less stake in your ego and more attachment to the facts. They help you cut fast what needs cutting - and calibrate what can be calibrated - without turning every adjustment into a drama.

Because when you’re the one carrying the decision, your brain protects you from the discomfort of uncertainty. An outside perspective doesn’t have that emotional stake.

In our sessions, I can say: “You just told me six weeks for this raise. I can hear in your voice that you genuinely believe it. Now walk me through how you got to that number.” And I can challenge every assumption without it calling your leadership into question.

4. Kill criteria defined before you launch

Decide in advance on the thresholds that will make you stop or adjust. Not while you’re in the middle of it and emotionally invested.

Still on the fundraising example (any resemblance to real figures is purely coincidental...):

If after 2 months, fewer than 2 VCs are in advanced due diligence - expand geographic scope or activate the bridge plan. If after 5 months, no term sheet signed - revisit valuation, consider a 20% reduction. If due diligence reveals 3 major unforeseen red flags - take a one-month strategic pause.

Write these thresholds down. Date them. Share them with your board or a trusted advisor. It’ll stop you from moving the goalposts mid-process out of optimism.

This technique works on its own, but in sessions I make sure you actually stick to your own thresholds. Because when you hit the stopping criterion, your brain will whisper justifications for continuing “just a little longer.” “We were almost at 3 VCs, that one was really interested...”

5. Shadow planning

Ask someone - your CTO, CFO, an advisor - to do their own estimate in parallel with yours, without consulting each other. Then compare.

If your CTO estimates four months for the build and you said two, dig into the gap. What is he seeing that you’re not? What’s he counting that you left out of scope?

The exercise often reveals that your optimism lives in the assumption that “everything will go as planned,” while they’re counting the real friction.

Shadow planning works especially well with someone who has less emotional stake in the outcome than you do. In sessions, we sometimes run this exercise together - I ask for your estimate, I make my own based on what you’ve described, and we compare. The gaps are often revealing.

My tips

Keep a “predictions journal”: Write down your hypotheses and predictions with a date. Reread them three months later. You’ll be surprised how optimistic you were - and you’ll start recognizing the patterns in your errors. In sessions with a Sparring Partner, you can dig into those recurring patterns. “Look - this is the fourth time you’ve underestimated raise timelines by a factor of two. What makes you systematically think it’ll go faster?”

The “why x3” technique: When you announce a deadline or a forecast, force yourself to interrogate your own certainties. “This raise will take two months.” Why two months? “Because I already have four interested VCs.” Why do four interested VCs equal two months? “Because they seem eager to close.” Why do you interpret their interest as urgency on their side? Often, by the third why, you realize your certainty rests on... optimism.

The mandatory 30% buffer: Systematically add 30% to all your timelines and subtract 30% from all your result estimates. Two-week sprint? Plan for three weeks. 20% adoption by day 30? Target 14%. This isn’t pessimism - it’s statistical realism. You’re managing variance rather than betting your credibility on the best possible case.

This week’s challenge

Take one hour this week to audit your three biggest current bets.

For each one, ask yourself:

“If I were an outside consultant looking at these numbers, what would I say about this timeline or target?” “What are the two things that could go wrong that I haven’t built into my plan?” “Have I ever seen someone pull this off in these conditions and this timeframe?”

Personal challenge: find your current blind optimism. That deadline that’s “tight but doable.” That raise that’s “definitely going to close fast.” That hire who’ll be “fully up to speed by week one.”

Write it down in black and white. Note your optimistic prediction. Then apply the +30% rule on timelines, -30% on results. Look at the gap. That’s probably where reality lives.

You don’t have to become a pessimist. Just a realist.

And if you can’t spot your own rose-tinted glasses (spoiler: that’s normal - we all wear them), you know where to find me. Sometimes it takes an outside perspective to tell the difference between healthy ambition and the blind optimism that burns through runways.

Your optimism is what gets projects started. Your realism is what makes them succeed.

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Optimism bias is human

And as a leader, you don’t have to face it alone. The best leaders aren’t the most optimistic. They’re the most clear-eyed.

Your optimism is a strength - it’s what makes you dare, launch, convince. But without calibration, it becomes a weakness that makes you underestimate obstacles and overpromise results.

Confidence means believing you’ll succeed. Blind optimism means believing you’ll succeed without friction. The difference between the two can kill your business.

Ready to take action? Book your discovery call: https://bit.ly/LBkBrief

Next week: the bias that makes doing something - even the wrong thing - always feel better than doing nothing. And why it’s even more dangerous when you’re the one deciding alone.

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Whether you run a team of three or a company of a thousand, whether you’re a founder negotiating with your co-founder or a manager navigating competing priorities - your job is to cut through the noise and move things forward.

The more responsibility you take on, the more decisions land on your desk - and the higher the stakes of each one. Your brain becomes your most critical business asset. It’s your sharpest tool in every strategy session, every crisis, every moment when people are waiting for you to decide.

The problem is, your brain wasn’t built for this.

This week, we’re diving into the bias that kills more businesses than almost any other: throwing good money after bad.

Fall in love with your product? That could kill your business.

You just launched your new feature. Six months of development, €80k invested, your team believed in it. The first numbers come in: three percent adoption. Your users aren’t biting. Your product manager tells you you just need to “tweak the onboarding.”

The developers who built it are looking at you with hope. Your CTO is waiting for your call. You know what the numbers are saying - but this feature represents six months of your roadmap. Already spent.

“But we’ve put so much time into this, we can’t just throw it away now.”

Do you push on or stop?

If you push on purely because you’ve already invested, you’re caught in the sunk cost fallacy. The same cognitive trap that killed Kodak.

When you’ve invested your time, your energy, and your credibility in something, your brain automatically activates a protection mechanism. Admitting you were wrong means questioning your judgment - and your standing as a leader. It’s mentally exhausting, and it can hurt your ego.

Winners quit fast, winners quit often, winners quit without guilt. - Seth Godin

A textbook case

The emblematic story? Kodak invented digital photography in 1975.

1975. They had a 25-year head start on everyone. But they buried their own invention to avoid “cannibalizing” their film business.

“We have 100 years of expertise in film - we’re not going to destroy our business for some geek technology.” (not an exact quote, but I’m certain someone said it at the time.)

Result? Apple and Samsung built their empires on technology that Kodak had sitting in a drawer. From photography giant to bankruptcy in 2012.

Kodak had the future in their hands, but the past in their heads. Not out of stupidity. Out of an instinctive drive to protect past investments.

You’re throwing good money after bad

Sunk cost fallacy - what is it, exactly?

It’s your brain’s tendency to keep going with something purely because you’ve already invested in it. Time, money, energy, credibility - doesn’t matter. Once you’ve put resources on the table, your brain refuses to “lose” them.

First identified by behavioral economists in the 1970s, this bias explains why we keep playing at the casino to “recover” our losses, why we finish boring books we’ve already started, and why the most rational leaders cling to their worst decisions (and I won’t even get into politics here...).

How does it work?

Your brain - that fundamentally lazy organ - hates admitting failure. Changing course means acknowledging you were wrong. It’s mentally exhausting, and it challenges your identity as a competent leader. So it doubles down rather than accept defeat.

The brain rationalizes: “We’ve already invested six months - we can’t just throw that away now.”

Isolation amplifies everything

As a leader, this bias becomes even more insidious.

Because when you’re the decision-maker, you’re alone with your mistakes.

That feature you championed? That hire you pushed for? That strategy you sold to the board? You made that call alone. And now you’re bearing the consequences alone.

No one else made that decision with you. No one else can carry the weight of the failure. Your name is on the decision, your judgment is under scrutiny, your credibility is on the line.

“We can’t stop now - I told the board this would work.” “That hire was my call, I can’t be wrong about this.” “If I walk away from this project, what is the team going to think of me?”

The higher you are, the more isolated you are when it comes to questioning yourself. No one to share your doubts with, no one to challenge your emotional resistance, no one to help you separate ego from business.

Result: you stay locked in with your bad decisions. Alone.

What I observe

In my work with leaders facing this kind of situation, I never start with “you need to fire them” or “you have to shut it all down.” I try to understand the emotional logic behind their resistance.

When a CEO tells me “I know I need to change this strategy, but we’ve already invested six months in it,” my first question isn’t “how much is it costing you to keep going?” It’s: “What scares you more - losing the six months already spent, or looking like someone who changes their mind?”

What usually emerges is a fascinating pattern: they lay out rational analyses of why it isn’t working... immediately followed by emotional justifications for why they need to continue. “The numbers show it’s not working, BUT we’ve invested so much that...”

The “aha” moment comes when I point out: “You just gave me three factual reasons to stop, and five emotional reasons to continue. What if we flipped that ratio?”

That’s when it gets interesting. Because verbalizing that battle between reason and emotion is different from living it alone in front of your dashboards. The exchange makes it possible to separate facts from feelings, ego from business.

In those conversations, the real underlying question usually surfaces: “If I stop this, what does that say about me as a leader?” The fear of judgment, of being seen as incompetent, of having your authority questioned.

Because admitting you were wrong about a hire or a strategy isn’t just acknowledging a tactical mistake. It’s calling your entire judgment as a leader into question. And when you’re carrying that responsibility alone, that kind of self-examination becomes terrifying.

How to take back control

1. The “Reset” technique before every continuation decision

At every checkpoint, ask yourself this one question: “If I were starting from scratch today, with everything I know now, what would I do?”

Deliberately ignore the past investment. Forget the six months of dev, the €50k spent, the ego on the table. Is this feature genuinely worth three more months? Would this hire actually improve your team if you were meeting them for the first time today?

In my sessions, this question often reveals a striking gap between the rational decision (stop) and the emotional one (keep going). When we explore that gap together, we can dig into the real resistance: “You’re telling me you’d stop if you were starting fresh. So what’s stopping you from making that call now?”

2. The pre-mortem with defined kill thresholds

Before every significant project, run a session: “In six months, if this fails - why?” But don’t stop at listing the risks. Define precise stopping criteria before you begin.

It looks like this:

“If adoption is below 10% in three months, we stop development.” “If fewer than two deals close per quarter, we change the sales rep.”

The exercise works well in a group - but when we do it together in session, I can push back on the thresholds you set too high out of optimism. “You said ten percent adoption minimum... what’s that based on? What if we were more honest about what success actually looks like?”

3. The systematic opportunity cost analysis

For every project you’re continuing, calculate what you’re missing by keeping it alive. That zombie feature is monopolizing a developer for three months - what else could they build? That underperforming hire is holding a seat that could be filled by whom?

The trap is that we rarely see the opportunities we’re passing up, while we see our past investments very clearly. In sessions, I can help you identify those blind spots: “While we’re optimizing this feature, your dev team could be shipping the one your customers have been asking for for six months...”

4. The quarterly Kill Meeting with a devil’s advocate

Set up a meeting dedicated exclusively to killing zombie projects. Every project has to justify its existence with cold KPIs, not hopes. Designate someone to play devil’s advocate on every continuation decision.

Their job: systematically ask, “What specific criteria would make us stop this project?” And define the trigger points in advance.

In session, we run this exercise together - and I can challenge your emotional resistance in real time. When you start justifying a dying project, I can notice: “Your tone shifted when you said ‘but we can still...’ What’s going on there?”

5. The sunk cost audit with an objective grid

After running the opportunity cost analysis, take stock of all your current investments: projects, hires, strategies, tools. For each one, score it 1 to 10 on:

• Current objective performance

• Probability of improvement in the next three months

• Opportunity cost if you continue

Anything that scores below 6/10 across all three = probable zombie.

The grid is useful for objectifying things, but it doesn’t resolve the emotional resistance. That’s why in sessions we also explore: “You scored this project 3/10 on everything, but you can’t bring yourself to stop it. What’s really holding you back?”

My tips

Keep a “bet journal”: Before every project, write down your success predictions and the maximum resources you’re willing to commit. Reread it at every checkpoint. You’ll be surprised how optimistic your initial predictions were - and how you’ll rationalize exceeding your original budget.

The 3-month rule: No zombie project survives more than three months after the first red flag. If it hasn’t taken off after a full quarter of effort, it’s done. And in sessions with a Sparring Partner, you can dig into why you’re holding on to certain projects despite the obvious signals.

The external magic question: Ask someone outside your company what they’d do with your numbers. An outside perspective has no emotional attachment to your past decisions.

This week’s challenge

Take two hours this week to do a zombie inventory.

List every project, investment, and ongoing decision. For each one, ask yourself the one question: “If I were starting today, would I do this again?”

Identify at least ONE thing you’re continuing out of habit, ego, or emotional attachment:

• That feature no one uses

• That process everyone works around

• That strategy that stopped converting

• That hire you quietly regret

Find YOUR zombie. And if you can’t be objective about your own choices (spoiler: that’s normal - none of us can), you know where to find me. Sometimes it takes an outside perspective to tell the difference between necessary conviction and costly blindness.

You don’t have to stop everything at once. But seeing it clearly is already taking back control.

The sunk cost fallacy is human

And as a leader, you don’t have to face it alone. The best leaders aren’t the ones who never make mistakes. They’re the ones who recognize them and correct them fast.

Your ego prefers a costly failure to the admission of a mistake. Your business prefers the truth. Often, you just need someone to remind you of that.

Ready to take action? Book your discovery call: https://bit.ly/LBkBrief

Next week: the bias that makes you systematically overestimate your own abilities — and how leadership isolation turns that necessary confidence into dangerous arrogance that can destroy your business.

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Whether you run a team of three or a company of a thousand, whether you’re a founder negotiating with your co-founder or a manager navigating competing priorities — your job is to cut through the noise and move things forward.

The more responsibility you take on, the more decisions land on your desk — and the higher the stakes of each one. Your brain becomes your most critical business asset. It’s your sharpest tool in every strategy session, every crisis, every moment when people are waiting for you to decide.

The problem is, your brain wasn’t built for this. Those mental shortcuts that kept humans alive for millennia? Those same patterns that helped us make life-or-death decisions in seconds? They’re still running the show — whether you’re arbitrating product roadmaps or budget allocations.

This newsletter covers the predictable ways our wiring makes us glitch when facing complex, high-stakes decisions. You’ll learn to spot these patterns, work with them instead of against them, and build systems that keep your decision-making sharp when it counts.

Think you’re always right? That could kill your business.

You’ve been staring at your screen for 20 minutes. The adoption numbers for your new feature are right there: three clients love it, 15 find it confusing, two can’t figure it out at all.

You know what that means. But when you’re under pressure to prove you’ve got your product under control — and that this feature is going to change everything — your brain desperately searches for another explanation.

“The three who love it are visionary early adopters. They’re the ones worth listening to.” You’ll even quote them in your next campaign.

The other 17? “They didn’t understand the value.” “They’re not the right customers.” “We just need to explain it better.”

This situation — or something very close to it — shows up in eight out of ten engagements I run. Every time, the leader is genuinely convinced they’re looking at the full picture. But in reality...

Welcome to the wonderful world of confirmation bias.

A textbook case

In 2000, Netflix approached Blockbuster with an offer to buy their company for $50 million. At the time, Blockbuster dominated the video rental market with 9,000 stores worldwide (mostly in the US — and true story: back in 1995 in Amherst, Massachusetts, I barely went a week without renting a film there. Sometimes two. Be kind, rewind.)

Blockbuster’s CEO at the time, John Antioco, had access to the same data as everyone else: Netflix was losing money, streaming was embryonic, bandwidth was expensive. At every presentation of this “opportunity,” he found reassuring counter-arguments: “People like going out to pick their films.” “Streaming isn’t profitable.” “Our physical model dominates the market.”

In 2010, Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy. Netflix is now worth more than $500 billion.

(Note: although Antioco denied in 2022 that this acquisition meeting ever took place, Marc Randolph maintains his version of events in his book That Will Never Work — which I’d recommend, by the way.)

When your business model has been working for years, your brain becomes expert at interpreting every signal as confirmation that you’re right to keep going. Even when the world is shifting under your feet.

You’re filtering reality

Confirmation bias — what is it, exactly?

It’s your brain’s tendency to seek out, interpret, and retain only the information that confirms your existing beliefs — while ignoring or downplaying everything that contradicts them.

First documented by psychologist Peter Wason in the 1960s, this bias explains why the most intelligent leaders fall into the same predictable traps.

When you’ve invested your credibility, your time, and your money in a strategy, your brain automatically activates a protection mechanism. Changing your mind on something important is mentally exhausting — and it could force you to question your identity as a leader. Your brain is fundamentally lazy (I’ve mentioned this before). Changing your mind takes energy, challenges assumptions, and can hurt your ego. So it edits: keeps what’s convenient, discards the rest.

The worst part? It does this in complete good faith. You’re genuinely convinced you’re looking at the full picture. But in reality, you’re only seeing what proves you right.

John Antioco wasn’t stupid. He was caught in the most natural trap in the world: protecting what had made him successful up to that point.

Isolation amplifies everything

As a leader, this bias becomes even more insidious.

John Antioco had a team of hundreds, consultants, analysts. But in the end, he was the one who had to decide. And when you’re the one carrying final responsibility, your brain protects you even more aggressively from information that challenges your choices.

The higher you go, the less people dare contradict you. Your team has learned: you don’t like bad news. So they present the numbers in the most positive light possible.

“Streaming is growing, but our stores are still profitable.” “Netflix is expanding, but we still own 90% of the market.” “Younger customers are changing, but our core audience remains loyal.”

Result: you end up steering your business with a biased dashboard. And no one around you has any incentive to tell you that you’re wrong.

What I observe

In my work with leaders facing this kind of situation, I never start with “you’re wrong.” I try to understand the logic behind their certainties.

When a CEO tells me “my team doesn’t understand the value of this strategy,” my first question isn’t “what if the strategy just isn’t working?”

It’s: “Walk me through how you arrived at that conclusion.”

What usually emerges is a fascinating pattern: they describe a coherent, logical reasoning process, built on real data... but one that systematically excludes certain signals. Not out of bad faith. Out of psychological self-protection.

The “aha” moment comes when I point out: “You just gave me five arguments in favor, and you mentioned three contradictory signals that you immediately explained away. What if we spent ten minutes digging into those three signals — without trying to dismantle them?”

That’s when it gets interesting. Because verbalizing those weak signals — sometimes not so weak — is different from staring at them alone in front of your dashboard. The exchange makes it possible to explore uncomfortable truths.

How to take back control

1. The systematic Red Team

Assign someone on your team to play devil’s advocate on every important decision. Their job: tear your ideas apart. And reward them when they find holes.

In my sessions, I naturally take on this Red Team role — but I also watch the emotional resistance that surfaces. When someone challenges your deep convictions, your body reacts before your mind does. Those micro-tensions, those justifications that come too fast... that’s where the real work starts.

2. The pre-mortem before every project

Imagine your project has failed in six months. Ask your team: “What happened?” You’ll uncover blind spots.

The exercise works well — but when we do it together, I can push on the failure scenarios you mention quickly, the ones you bring up and then brush aside. “You said ‘if customers don’t understand the value’... unpack that. What would actually make them not get it?”

3. Diversify your information sources

Break out of your bubble: read sources that don’t think like you, talk to customers who rejected your product, exchange ideas with adjacent industries.

The trap is that you can diversify your sources and still filter what you take from them. Part of our work together is noticing what bothers you in those contradictory pieces of information — and why.

4. The three-hypothesis rule

For every important decision, formulate three possible explanations before deciding. Force yourself to find evidence for each one — not just the one you like.

Quick example: “our sales are down” could be explained by (1) pricing too high, (2) a more aggressive competitor, or (3) a market shift we haven’t spotted. Explore all three before deciding.

We naturally tend to explore the hypothesis that suits us most. In sessions, I make sure each hypothesis gets equal attention — and I push on the ones you rush through to “eliminate.”

5. Blind analysis

Ask someone to analyze your data without telling them what conclusion you’ve drawn. Compare your interpretations. The differences reveal your blind spots.

This works particularly well with an outside perspective that has no stake in your decisions. When we analyze data together in session, I often spot patterns you have right in front of you — but that your brain is unconsciously filtering out.

6. Build a culture of constructive doubt

Never penalize someone who brings data that contradicts the official direction. Do the opposite — highlight it. In your meetings, build in ten minutes of devil’s advocate time where the team must criticize the decision being considered.

The trap here: even with this culture, your team is still influenced by what they think you want to hear. That’s why an external Sparring Partner can say things your team will never dare put into words.

My tips

Keep a “prediction journal”: Write down your hypotheses and predictions with a date. Reread them three months later. You’ll be surprised how often you were wrong — and you’ll start recognizing the patterns in your mistakes. In sessions with a Sparring Partner, you can dig into those recurring patterns.

The magic question: Before every important decision, ask yourself: “What would prove me wrong?” Then go actively look for that information. Easier said than done — which is exactly why having an outside perspective that asks it for you is worth something.

This week’s challenge

Want to genuinely test whether you’re prone to confirmation bias?

Pick ONE strong belief you hold about your business. Something you’re absolutely certain about.

Now spend two hours this week looking for evidence that you’re wrong. Not nuances. Not “yes, but.” Hard evidence that you’re completely off.

You don’t have to change your mind. But you’ll be surprised by what you find when you actively look for the counter-argument.

And if you can’t be objective about your own blind spots (spoiler: that’s normal — John Antioco couldn’t either), you know where to find me. Sometimes it takes an outside perspective to tell the difference between necessary conviction and dangerous blindness.

Confirmation bias is human. And as a leader, you don’t have to face it alone. It just takes a bit of method.

Ready to take action? Book your discovery call: https://bit.ly/LBkBrief

Next week: the leaders who fall systematically in love with their failures — and how emotional attachment to what you’ve built can turn a rational decision into a financial time bomb.

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I’ve been running a newsletter in French for the past few months. Every week, one cognitive bias. One case study. One practical way to catch yourself before the bias catches you.

The feedback was good. The readers were engaged. And then a few people started whispering: “Laura, this needs to exist in English.”

So here we are.

Sharp Decisions is a weekly newsletter for CEOs and founders who want to make better calls.

Not “better” as in faster, or more confident. Better as in: actually grounded in reality, not in the stories your brain tells you to protect your ego, avoid discomfort, or take the path of least resistance.

Because that’s what cognitive biases do. They’re not a sign of stupidity - they’re the predictable ways a very smart brain glitches under pressure. And the higher you are, the more isolated you tend to be, the more dangerous they become. No one around you pushing back. No one saying “are you sure about this?” Your team has learned not to challenge you. Your board is protecting their investment.

So you make decisions inside a bubble. And the bubble distorts everything.

Each edition covers one bias. How it works, why it hits leaders especially hard, what it looks like in real business situations - and what you can actually do about it.

No frameworks with five-letter acronyms. No generic advice. Concrete stuff, grounded in 25+ years of working alongside leaders who are brilliant at what they do and still get ambushed by their own blind spots.

Sharp Decisions drops every Thursday at 8am.

The first editions are already planned out - I translated the opening chapters of the French series to get you started. You’ll soon be able to dive into Confirmation Bias, the Sunk Cost Fallacy, Optimism Bias, Action Bias, the Availability Bias… and more !

If you’ve ever pushed a project forward because you’d already invested too much to stop, hired someone because they reminded you of yourself, or dismissed data that contradicted what you already believed - you’re in the right place.

Subscribe. And next Thursday, your brain will have a little less room to lie to you.

Laura

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