💃 You Better Recognize - Hindsight Bias🕺

Good morning, Salesforce Nerds! There is no substitute for experience.

The more at-bats you get, the more pitches you see - the more likely you are to get a hit ⚾️.

Experience nurtures confidence.

When you’ve seen a thing before, iterated on it, then you will recall what you learned and feel better about it the second, third, and fourth repetition.

Confidence is good. Hindsight Bias is bad.

What is Hindsight Bias?

👇

WHAT IS IT?

What is Hindsight Bias?

Hindsight Bias is when you perceive a past event, like your first data migration project, and believe the event was more predictable than it actually was, like how difficult it was to migrate Activities to Opportunities.

The experience you have now informs your past-self. The current-you thinks “Of course, I’d known all along how difficult it is to load Activities on Opportunities! How could I not have known?!”

Right back at you 👊 - how could you have known if it was your first time? Sure, if you thought about it deeply, you could have came to that conclusion.

But who thinks about data migration deeply 😅! Cut yourself some slack!

There is also the “false-positive” version of this.

Using the same example of “your first data migration,” except only loading Users and Leads (a much simpler process than Activities and Opportunities).

In this case, your first experience, loading Users and Leads, was easy! Your current-self thinks, “Of course this was easy, I have known it all along!”

And then you may incorrectly assume that all Data Migrations are easy.

This is Hindsight Bias.

WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?

Why Should You Care About Hindsight Bias?

It’s a trap!

At its worst, Hindsight Bias will mislead you. Here’s what we mean-

Going back to our data migration example, imagine your first migration was just Users and Leads, and your Hindsight Bias led you to believe that “of course data migrations are easy!” 😃

And then your next data migration includes Activities and Opportunities and you waltz into the project, high on your Hindsight Bias that data migration is easy 😼.

You block out the same amount of time it took you to do Leads and Users, expecting to cruise through Opportunities and Activities.

3x effort later and you’re still not done 🥵.

You dunno what you dunno. And Hindsight Bias is nature’s sick way of making you think otherwise.

WHAT’S INCLUDED?

What Does Hindsight Bias Impact?

Hindsight Bias keeps you from working backwards, looking two steps ahead, and peeking around the corner to see what lurks in the shadows.

It makes you assume too much. And causes you to miss considerations, exceptions, and risks.

The more you learn about Salesforce, the more you understand you will never learn everything - Sales, Service, Experience, Industry, Marketing, Omnistudio. Apex, Flows, LWC, SOQL, CPQ.

Hindsight Bias makes you forget your humility. It gives you a misplaced confidence.

You, the Salesforce professional, knows how dangerous it is to lose respect for the enterprise beast that is Salesforce. If you don’t respect it, who’s going to? The salespeople?!! 😂🤣😭 

HOW DO YOU AVOID IT?

How Do You Prevent the Effects of Hindsight Bias?

Notice the header isn’t “How to prevent Hindsight Bias.”

Your brain is gonna brain 🧠, you can’t avoid Hindsight Bias. It’s like an emotion - you can’t avoid or control your emotions. But you can control how you react to them.

Additionally, these 3 things will help prevent the negative impacts of Hindsight Bias-

✅ Strong beliefs, loosely held. Your previous experience shapes your current knowledge and skills. But remain open-minded. Stay humble. Understand there’s more than one way to bake a cake. Be open to other methods, tools, and opinions.

✅ Documentation is a cheat code. Referencing historical documentation will give you critical and nuanced insights into what to expect, and what can go wrong. Decision points, exceptions, or missing validations.

✅ Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Approach each scenario with caution - what haven’t you considered, what are the exceptions, what are the risks? Even if you’ve had a similar experience in the past, somehow the world knows when you let your guard down 👊.

DREAMFORCE 2024

Salesforce recently dropped their Dreamforce 2024 landing page and 💃🕺🤩💰🥰💃🕺. Is this the most impressive landing page you’ve ever seen?

This is how you roll when you’re a $200BB+ company putting on a $200MM+ event 💃🕺!

Must’ve cost 1/10 Matthew McConaugheys 🤑?

Will you be attending Dreamforce this year?

SOUL FOOD

Today’s Principle

and now....Your Salesforce Memes