Cog bias
Andrew Taylor writes the really great Artful Manager blog. I don't remember how I stumbled across his stuff, but I really love it. Especially since every other year I team-teach an undergraduate class called "Theatre Management." The class starts up again next fall, so I'm really paying attention to Andrew's writing and keeping notes on stuff I want to pass along.
He recently wrote a great bit on what he called "brain-blinders." He writes:
A 'cognitive bias' is a kind of blind-spot in our brains -- the result
of short-cuts or habits within our thinking process -- that can lead us
to make less productive choices. This list contains a long sequence of
suggested biases, some of which have been shown repeatedly in clinical
testing, others that are just theoretical. Many are obviously at work
in the organizations I've worked in or talked with over the decades.
And if I don't watch it, they're also hard at work in my own brain.
Go have a look at the list and his comments--good stuff. And he points to a HUGE list of cognitive biases on the wikipedia.
One more thing: he doesn't provide full text RSS feeds, but don't yell at him. Apparently he's stuck with some odd software that only spits out the titles. He knows it's annoying and he'll be migrating to something else before long...
