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You know the story.

A plant has a string of rough weeks. Missed metrics, late shipments, maybe even a safety issue or two. Senior leadership starts asking questions. Eventually, someone at the top decides: “I’m going down there myself.”

The Big Boss walks the floor, talks to the team, checks a few dashboards, leaves with a head full of insights—and like magic, the next day’s numbers rebound.

Cue the post-visit debrief:

“It was clear they just needed to feel some pressure. The team needed to know leadership was watching.”

And the myth is born: I showed up. Results improved. Therefore, I fixed it.

Except… you didn’t.

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Regression to the Mean Isn’t Leadership

The truth is almost always more boring than we want it to be.

When a team performs well below their baseline for several days in a row, it is statistically likely that the next day will be better, regardless of who walks in.

This is regression to the mean, not cause and effect. But when leaders misread randomness as impact, they start to build a faulty internal model:

• “When I visit, things improve.”

• “They need my presence to perform.”

• “My gut was right. I knew exactly what to say.”

It’s not arrogance. It’s a cognitive trap, and one that even seasoned executives fall into.

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We Hate Randomness (So We Make Stuff Up)

Humans are story-driven creatures. Our brains are wired to connect dots, even when no pattern exists. In statistics, this is just noise. In business, we mistake it for insight.

That’s why you hear confident takes like:

• “Ever since I gave that speech, morale’s been better.”

• “Once I moved that underperformer to a new role, the numbers jumped.”

• “After I started weekly check-ins, we stopped missing deadlines.”

Sometimes those things do help. But sometimes… the streak just ended. That’s it. No hero narrative required.

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The Gambler’s Fallacy (And Its Corporate Cousins)

There’s a related bias we explore in this week’s new video: the Gambler’s Fallacy, the idea that past random events influence future outcomes.

If you’ve ever thought “we’re due for a win,” or bet bigger because you just lost five times in a row… that’s the trap.

In the corporate version, it sounds like:

“Three good quarters in a row. We must be doing something right.”

Or:

“This new initiative has to work. We’ve had too many failures.”

It doesn’t. It won’t. And those failures don’t make success more likely. Randomness doesn’t have a memory.

📺 Watch the video now (4 minutes): Why You’re Not Due For A Win: The Gambler’s Fallacy Explained

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Want to Stop Falling for Decision-Making Traps?

The truth is, you don’t rise to the level of your title—you fall to the level of your thinking habits.

That’s why we built the Decision Trap Course: a fast-paced, research-backed, totally practical training that helps leaders spot—and avoid—the most common thinking errors that sabotage performance.

Use it as a standalone tool for your leadership team or embed it into your org’s leadership development program.

It covers traps like the Sunk Cost Fallacy, Hindsight Bias, and the Anchoring Trap.

You’ll leave with tools, not just theory.