How to deal with chronic overconfidence

Dusseldorf One of the most spectacular mergers in economic history began with overconfidence. In 1998 the car manufacturers Daimler and Chrysler merged, the then Daimler CEO Jürgen Schrempp spoke of a “marriage in heaven”. They want to become “the most innovative company the world has ever seen,” he said. However, the heavenly marriage was to last only nine years.

“Schrempp massively overestimated himself,” says Uwe Kanning today. He is a business psychologist at Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences. For him, the manager is the perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. The term is used when people cannot realistically assess their abilities and believe they are particularly competent in an area – when the opposite is true.