As Product- or Marketing Manager at Comparis, you thrive to deliver value to our users. And of course, to deliver value to our company. You publish features and campaigns and as you do, you are sure they will have a positive impact on your business.

But: We are humans. Not machines. And as humans, we have some build-in-faults in our ways of thinking and behaving. Even with the best intentions, we can't avoid them. So let's face the typical human biases that can lead us in the wrong direction:

<aside> 🚹 Human Bias 1: We overestimate the probability of a positive outcome.

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We tend to think that our ideas will work, just because they are our ideas.

<aside> 🚹 Human Bias 2: We overestimate the impact of our ideas.

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We overestimate the impact that our initiative will have. On the other hand, we tend to underestimate the costs, time, effort, energy and money it takes us to get there.

<aside> 🚹 Human Bias 3: We protect our ideas, even if they failed.

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In hindsight, we claim that "something else did not work" to justify our estimations on the impact and success of our idea.

How can you avoid falling into that bias trap? How can you make sure, that your decisions follow facts and not your biases? Well: you run experiments. You can then look at solid data instead of the crystal ball of your gut feeling. And your gut feeling can be dead wrong.

But hey, wrong decisions can be taken back, if they don't work out, right?

Not really:

• The harm is already done and you wasted scarce resources on something, that turned out to have no or negative impact - you generated sunk costs.
• Fact is: this happens rarely in real life. Organizations, like humans, tend to stick to their decisions. This can result in toxic "business depts". Examples are undesireable features, which you still maintain or that rarely used service, you still provide.

So, it is wise to gather evidence that you are right before you take a business decision.

<aside> ⚗ Experiments rule out human biases that might lead to wrong decisions and avoid sunk costs

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