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Human dimensions

The psychological and cognitive aspects of working with - or against - systems.

Systems are made of parts. In organisations, the parts are people. And people come with their own operating system: bounded rationality, action bias, narrative fallacy, motivated reasoning, decision fatigue.

These aren’t bugs - they’re features of how human cognition works under real-world constraints. But they interact with system structures in ways that matter. Action bias plus a complex system produces intervention that makes things worse. Narrative fallacy plus hindsight bias produces the illusion that we understood what happened, when we didn’t.

Understanding these dimensions isn’t about fixing people. It’s about designing systems that work with human cognition rather than against it - and recognising the moments when our instincts are leading us astray.

9 concepts

Action Bias
The tendency to do something - anything - rather than wait, watch, and understand
Bounded Rationality
People make reasonable decisions given the information and cognitive capacity available to them - which is always limited
Cognitive Load
The amount of working memory being used - complex systems impose high load, which degrades thinking
Decision Fatigue
The deteriorating quality of decisions after a long session of decision-making
Hindsight Bias
After something happens, it seems obvious it was going to happen - making us overconfident about our ability to predict
Motivated Reasoning
Finding the evidence for what you already believe - the human default, not the exception
Narrative Fallacy
The need to construct a simple story from complex events - makes us feel like we understand, even when we don't
Satisficing
Choosing good enough rather than optimal - often the rational response to complexity
Sensemaking Under Pressure
How people actually make sense of complex situations in real time - usually not through analysis