How come we keep holding on to a situation, even though we know it will not be successful in the long run?

Sometimes we are simply so invested in a situation – we have put our hearts, money, and resources into it. And then it’s hard to take the decision to change drastically, acknowledge our losses, and steer in the direction where, in the long run, we will be in a better position.

We tend to:

In 2015, my colleague Fleur Lamers and I performed research on cognitive biases in project decision-making where we identified signs and causes of “escalated commitment” to failing courses of action in the context of business transformation projects.

I am sharing a summary of our findings while putting them into a business sustainability context – an area where these biases also have a massive impact. Our brains are wired to focus on surviving here and now. This makes it for example harder to grasp future impacts of climate change or to recognize social inequality if we are not confronted with it directly.

These biases tend to have a strong effect on decision-making and are holding back business leaders when it comes to committing to, investing in, and realizing sustainability approaches and projects in their companies. Often, we do not recognize our biases and therefore do not realize how they influence our decision-making.

Read on to identify ways to recognize these patterns and how to tackle them in our journeys toward a sustainable world.

Picture3.png

Optimism and illusion of control

***“*wishful thinking”

We tend to overestimate the likelihood that positive events will occur and underestimate the likelihood of negative outcomes[1].

Our brains are not made to focus on risks in the long-term and our future scenarios are difficult for us to grasp. Our brains tend to build general conclusions and predictions based on a number of consistent observations. We tend to simply assume that things will work out well, even though data suggests problems will arise.

How to act?