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Field Note #072 | The Availability Bias
Description
The presence was noticed.
The contribution was not.
——
Think back to the last colleague praised in your company’s all-hands meeting.
Chances are, they were standing at the centre of a visible emergency—late nights, urgent messages, and a dramatic last-minute recovery.
Now think about the person whose preventative work ensured that three other departments experienced zero emergencies that same month.
Were they mentioned at all?
In this episode of Field Notes, we examine the mechanism of the Availability Bias inside organised human systems.
Drawing on cognitive psychology and operational practice, this episode unpacks The Visibility Tax: why upstream prevention produces Diagnostic Silence, why human memory equates noise with value, and how organisations accidentally incentivise theatrical firefighting over durable engineering.
The presence was noticed.
The contribution was not.
You will leave with one portable question to recalibrate how you evaluate talent tomorrow morning: If this person’s work succeeded completely over the last six months, what crisis did we never have to hold a meeting about?
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