 Hi there, Jeff Watts here and this video is focusing on some of the biggest and most important cognitive biases that you might need to be aware of if you're a product owner. Now our brains are probably our most fantastic asset that we have when tackling complex problems like product development but simply because of the sheer volume of stimuli and information just coming at us all the time. Our brains have developed shortcuts for filtering out what we think is necessary and important and what isn't and that most of the time that works brilliantly because we simply wouldn't be able to function if we tried to pay attention to every piece of data that was coming into our eyes and our ears and our brains. So those shortcuts that filtering stuff is great but there are a number of times when it doesn't work brilliantly. We call those cognitive biases and there are tons and tons out there. I mean just look at some of the number of cognitive biases that some people have mapped out. There's loads of them. However, from a product owner's perspective here are some that I think are really worth being aware of. The first one is stereotyping and you've probably heard of the phrase already it's not one of the particularly clever scientific names of these cognitive biases they're coming later and most product owners will have come across this quite consciously because most of the product owners that I'm aware of have used some kind of visual demographic representation such as personas. So a persona is just a tool or a technique that product owners use to visualize or represent one of their users past present current. It's really useful in terms of product design, in terms of solution emergence, in terms of engaging a development team for example, but it's really really easy to slip into sort of lazy stereotypes of personas and thinking of just a generic millennial or a US soccer mom or a Star Wars geek developer whatever. Those stereotypes are often less helpful than having no persona at all because they really prejudice our thinking sometimes they can alienate our user base. So being aware of our potential to stereotype is probably the first thing that I encourage product owners to just be a little bit more mindful of. The second cognitive bias that I think is really important is anchoring. So anchoring refers to once we get something into our heads, an idea, perhaps a way of working, even a venue or a belief, something once it's in our heads, it's very difficult to shift it. So as a product owner if I've somehow made my mind up that a feature is a good thing or a release date is a really good thing then I can become anchored to that. It can be in terms of negotiations in terms of the cost of something or the price of something. Once that first figure or that first date or that first priority has been put out there we become anchored to it. So as product owners we need to be aware of that for our own decision making but also how our users and our customers can be influenced perhaps even by us and perhaps even by others in focus groups what have you. This anchoring doesn't even have to be very explicit or blatant. It could be really subtle, it could be really unconscious, it can even be accidental. So being really aware of the environment that we're putting our users in when we're making our decisions or our teams, really really useful. Some product owners will use the knowledge of this in perhaps a more manipulative way. That would be very similar to a magician who's sort of forcing you to pick a particular card they want you to pick. They know the little triggers that affect our unconscious choice that undermines our free will and I wouldn't endorse that whatsoever and so if I were to ask you to choose your favorite between these two animals then there's a very good chance that you'll be pulled towards the elephant okay and that's not your fault all right. It's because of some subtle or perhaps not so subtle triggers and anchors that I put into the video but equally if you're aware of what's going on if you saw that elephant in my video then you might know what I was trying to do and that would consciously push you towards the other animal which is another form of anchoring and manipulation. So being aware of that very important for product owners. Confirmation bias is probably one of the more commonly spoken about cognitive biases and it refers to how as human beings we generally want our views our beliefs to be proven correct to other people but also to ourselves so if we have a view about something and we're picking up data could be reading a news article or could be interpreting customer feedback then we subconsciously select out the information that backs up our previous and existing view and tends to filter out contradictory evidence. You'll probably be aware of the placebo effect people in a control sample given a basically a sugar pill but they believe that that pill is going to be successful for them and quite often just the belief that that pill is helping will cause some of their symptoms to go away. So think about how you can set up really quite neutral experiments very scientifically structured experiments to take your prejudices and preconceived ideas out of the equation and make the results a lot more objective. The fourth cognitive bias is the endowment effect now this isn't really anything to do with mortgages or health purchases but it is to do with the ownership of something. Now the ownership could be of a material possession such as a house or it could be to do with a product it could even be to do with something a little more abstract perhaps our ways of working our views our beliefs our values but whatever it is if we own it if it's ours then the endowment effect says we place a greater than objective value on it so if I had bought a two pound lottery ticket lucky dip and someone came to buy that lottery ticket off me before the draw I would want more than two pounds for it which is its nominal objective value because it's mine I've invested something of me in that okay now I can explain that by what if it won I'd be kicking myself perhaps especially if I've chosen my numbers then it's an even greater value. So the endowment effect is really important when thinking about shifting users to our product or convincing them to stop using one piece of functionality and use another. The fifth cognitive bias is gambler's fallacy now if I were to flip a coin and it came down heads and I asked you instinctively what do you think the most likely outcome is if I flip it again most of you will probably if you're honest with yourselves be instinctively drawn to tails even though logically we know it's a 50% chance these tails are 50% heads if I had to if I forced you to pick an outcome the chances are most of you would pick tails if I flipped a coin twice and it came down heads and heads and then asked you to pick what you think's likely to happen next time just don't get instinct you probably have an even stronger instinct to tails the more you have in a row the more we think it's likely to happen even though those results are completely independent of the future results so as product tellers if we if there's a chance that we might be inferring a sort of dependence or a sequence when actually those events are independent of one another or perhaps our users are doing that then just bringing that to the surface rationally detaching the past events from the current and the potential future could be enough to just help us break that bias the sixth cognitive bias is the sunk cost fallacy also known as throwing good money after bad or chasing our losses and also just like the gamblers fallacy stems from the world of gambling and is often explained with a poker analogy so we place multiple bets during a game of poker so I would place a bet put some money into the middle based on the cards that I see at the moment and that money is now gone I can't get it back when the next card comes down I have the opportunity to place another bet or I could walk away now the good gambler will make that decision based on the cost to play against the value of walking away not how much I already invested because that money has gone and product owners are the same if we've spent money trying to build something in a sprint and it hasn't worked out we choose whether to carry on with that development purely on the objective future cost and the future benefit not on the sunk cost of the previous sprint we don't carry on throwing good money after bad number seven is the ostrich syndrome now I've written about this in my book the coach's case book with Kim Morgan and I'm very aware that the idea of the ostrich burying their head in the sand is an urban myth very aware of that but the metaphor has stuck and it describes a situation whereby we are trying to avoid becoming aware of information that we kind of know we don't want to hear so we metaphorically bury our head in the sand and try and avoid it now that could be something quite conscious we could for example choose to cancel a sprint review because we know we have really got something worth showing and we don't want the negative feedback or it could be something unconscious we don't realize that we're trying to avoid meetings or calls but great product owners know the best to get that bad news early because it gives us greater time and opportunity to deal with it and turn it around cognitive bias number eight the white coat syndrome so this refers to the idea of doctors usually and that's historically where it came from being seen as a very universal source of authority and there's there's good reason for that they've studied for a long time they know a lot about our our health that we don't we're sort of in their hands if you like we trust them because well they must know what they're talking about and it's been expanded since to any position of authority that could be formal authority like a doctor or a police officer for example it could be informal authority could just be someone who we respect perhaps you know we've seen them in a movie we like them and therefore we somehow put greater emphasis and value on what they're saying about politics that white coat syndrome could even be there are some really funny experiments about this just somebody wearing a uniform we then we tend to place greater value on their opinions their actions so separating out the white coat syndrome and trying to be objective as possible number nine is the status quo bias this is nothing to do with the rock group but it's the view that generally speaking all things being equal human beings would prefer things to stay the same if you've ever heard the phrase better the devil you know that's that's a description of the status quo bias it's not that we are lazy all right and we just can't be bothered to avoid change it's the status quo bias we will actually expend often very very significant amounts of energy and even money to try and preserve the status quo sometimes for nostalgic reasons but usually for to avoid risk because this human beings we are risk averse we're loss averse and any change in our minds has the risk of not working I used to work with a guy that said scrum could add value here and and yeah I know our current processes are a bit broken but you know what I'd rather fail with something I know than fail with something I don't know that's a classic example of the status quo bias now there's one one good way that I really really like to try and help with that and that's visualization so in other words visualize the the alternative future the proposed change literally close your eyes imagine picture this future whether it's a feature on a product or what you are able to do with this new product or how life will be different if this change happens personal life professional life and actually sit in that alternative reality for a while perhaps with the help of a coach who can who can really help you sort of stay present stay in that moment and feel what you would feel in that environment see what you would see hear what you would hear so that you become a little bit more attached to it and that way we can take advantage of the endowment effect because now I know that feature I have that future and potentially I might not want to give it back that's called the reversal test and the reversal test is also useful this visualization exercise is also useful with my final cognitive bias number 10 which is technically called temporal discounting but some people also call it short-term hedonism now I tend to explain this as short-term Jeff versus long-term Jeff and if let's say I was on a healthy eating diet or perhaps I'm in dry January or something so I know the long-term benefits for me to be on this healthy in this healthy lifestyle but equally if I walk past the chocolate bar or you know I get offered a pint of beer then short-term Jeff sees the short-term pleasure I can almost taste it before I've got it and short-term generally wins out over long-term and this is why quite often we can be seen to almost be acting against our own best interests where we can sabotage ourselves because we'll make suboptimal short-term decisions at the expense of more optimal long-term decisions simply because we find it difficult to imagine that far into the future how often have you heard for example or we don't prioritize the fixing of technical debt because we've got this cool new sexy feature that's temporal discounting at the logical level we know fixing this technical debt is a good thing to do but the benefits are so far in the future and the sexy new feature we could have now classic temporal discounting for product owners I don't want you to feel overwhelmed by this because they're natural they're normal and sometimes just awareness of them is enough because once we're aware of them we can actually do something about them so the best product owners have some kind of rituals in place to help them just check themselves against some of these cognitive biases perhaps it's literally a checklist yeah how do I feel I'm doing with regards to confirmation bias short-term hedonism these things yeah yeah yeah yeah oh yeah probably that one and then we can do something about it as I said there are tons and tons of cognitive biases I'd love to hear your opinions on what the more important ones are for product owners add them in the comments thanks for watching