Optimism Bias: how to feel good and make poor decisions
Advertising veteran Paul Cowan recently released a guidebook to navigating the challenges of commercial relationships, with content derived from empirical data, cognitive psychology, adaption-innovation theory, and personal experience from nearly a half century in the field. Below is an excerpt from ‘Connecting With Clients’ by Cowan.
“The next presentation will turn it around.”
“They love the team in New York, so we’ve got the agency there to tackle one of the brand briefs.”(1)
Agencies seem to attract more positive personality types (2) than others.
Yet despite overwhelming evidence that the worst case does happen, many chief executives view problem accounts through an overly positive lens.
