Champion Bias

Once a person is crowned — the champion, the star employee, the genius founder — everything they touch is read through the crown. Their average idea is brilliant; their rudeness is intensity; their luck was vision.

The mechanism is simple accounting. Reputation is a lens ground from past victories, and lenses do not report reality; they bend it. Each new act is interpreted to match the story already written about the person.

It works downward as well. The man once labelled a failure can produce excellent work and watch it be received as a fluke. Same lens, opposite tint.

So separate the work from the worker, on purpose. When evaluating an idea, ask: if the office junior had said this, would I still nod? And when dismissing one: if the champion had said it, would I still frown? The idea has no resume. Only people do.