Evading Confirmation Bias: Strategies for Product Managers
COMMON PRODUCT MANAGER MISTAKE #2
In the world of product management, confirmation bias—seeking research that fits our pre-existing beliefs about our product or market—is a subtle yet pervasive mistake. Picture this: you're fully invested in a new feature, seemingly backed by all the right data. But are you truly listening to what the data tells you, or are you only hearing what you want to hear?”
This is Common Product Manager Mistake #2 - falling into the Confirmation Bias trap. I made this mistake early in my career. I was so convinced in a product opportunity that I looked far and wide until I found data to support it, almost certainly overlooking conflicting data because it didn’t suit the argument I was constructing.
Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, and recall information in a way that confirms our preconceptions. In the realm of product management, this bias can be costly. It leads us down a path where we're so fixated on our hypothesis that we ignore or discredit information that contradicts it. And if it goes too far, you can end up wasting a lot of company resources and ultimately, you don’t serve your customers’ needs.
How can Product Managers avoid this common mistake? Awareness is the most important defense. Simply knowing this is a common risk keeps you more on guard and goes a long way to avoiding it. But awareness is not fool-proof; so here are several other ways to get extra insurance that this doesn’t happen to you.
Embrace the naysayer.
As product managers, we must be willing for others to question and challenge our assumptions and be open to being wrong. It's not about proving ourselves right; it's about finding what's right for the customer. This means actively seeking out and giving equal weight to data that challenges our beliefs. It also means engaging with naysayers; heck, maybe being your own naysayer every now and then. Occasionally defending your point of view will only serve to make it stronger and lessen the risk that you’ve succumbed to confirmation bias. And if you’re a product leader, fostering a culture of open-mindedness and curiosity within your team is crucial. Encourage debates, welcome different perspectives, and remember, it's okay to pivot.
Understand your target customers.
At the end of the day, your target customers are all that matter. So, the better you know and understand them, the lower your chances are of being tricked by confirmation bias. This is the number one piece of advice I give to Product Managers - get to know your customers! After all, if you were the target customer, you wouldn’t get duped by confirmation bias; you would innately know that something isn’t right. So, get outside the office - either physically or virtually - and spend time getting to know your target customer as well as you know your own self.
Seek outside support from a Product Coach.
Not only does nothing interesting happen inside the office - as I wrote about and referenced above - but sometimes bad things can happen inside the office. The stronger the vision and the stronger the senior leadership in the company, the higher the risk that you view the world through the company-created reality distortion field. So, what’s a product manager to do when everything they see proves the value of the product they are working on (because of confirmation bias) andeveryone around them agrees and supports her too (because of the reality distortion field)? This is where an outside perspective can help tremendously. Product Coaches (apologies for the shameless plug) are an amazing resource to help Product Managers and entire Product Management Teams identify their blind spots and see their world from different viewpoints. Good Product Coaches leverage their wealth of experience across a variety of industries to ask the right questions at the right time. That outside perspective is invaluable.
Conclusion
As product managers, we're often tasked with navigating through a sea of data and feedback. It's easy to fall into the trap of confirmation bias, but the real skill lies in always looking out for it and steering away from it. Keep questioning, keep exploring, and most importantly, keep listening to all the data – not just what supports your hypothesis. And if you feel you might be falling into the trap right now, go find a naysayer on your team to challenge your assumptions…or go talk to more customers…or reach out to a Product Coach. Do something.
Comments