Field Note #072 | The Availability Bias

Engineering the Intelligent Enterprise · Oct 29, 2026 · 49m

The presence was noticed.

The contribution was not.

——

Think back to the last colleague praised in your company’s all-hands meeting.

Chances are, they were standing at the centre of a visible emergency—late nights, urgent messages, and a dramatic last-minute recovery.

Now think about the person whose preventative work ensured that three other departments experienced zero emergencies that same month.

Were they mentioned at all?

In this episode of Field Notes, we examine the mechanism of the Availability Bias inside organised human systems.

Drawing on cognitive psychology and operational…