The Liberators Podcast
This is the podcast of The Liberators. Our mission is to unleash organizations and teams all across the globe from ineffective product development. We rely on insights from scientific research as much as possible so that you don't have to take our word for it.
In each episode, we look at the challenges faced by Agile teams, software teams, and product teams. We discuss relevant research, share our experiences, or challenge existing beliefs. Each episode ends with practical and actionable recommendations on what you can do with your teams.
Most episodes are written and presented by Christiaan Verwijs. Our music was written and performed by Jasper Huiskamp a.k.a. Basanite. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp. The music for episodes before 91 is licensed from Yummy Sounds.
The Liberators Podcast
How Biases Distort Our Beliefs (In The Workplace)
This episode is about how unreliable, nonobjective, and biased your and my thinking is. As sociologists and psychologists have long pointed out, we should develop a more skeptical and nuanced view of our own opinions.
In this episode, we explore eight biases and explore how they influence our beliefs in the workplace. A bias called "regression to the mean" can easily lead management to conclude that punishment for mistakes is more effective at producing desired behavior than rewards for achievements. The "survival bias" can lead people to conclude that certain methodologies or best-practices are successful purely because they only see the successes, but never the failures. Or "illusory superiority" leads to frustration and resentment because people feel that they are contributing more than others - as we all tend to do.
This episode is part of our "In-Depth" series. This means that we don't offer easy answers, but instead invite you to build a deeper understanding of how things work. Furthermore, we made an effort to dig deep into on-going scientific research. With this episode in mind, I'm sure you understand why we like Liberating Structures and Scrum so much. Or why we distrust "best practices".
This extra-long episode is based on this blog-post (all references are there):
https://bit.ly/30Je2Ni
Donate to support our work:
https://bit.ly/supportheliberators
Follow us on Medium:
https://medium.com/the-liberators
Support the show, our research, and community offerings via Patreon:
https://patreon.com/liberators
We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com
Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com
The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp.