The Assumption Your Whole Strategy Is Built On

Image by @lausteff from Unsplash

Let's start with a definition. According to dictionary.com, to assume means to take something for granted, without proof.

Assumptions cut two ways.

The good kind: you picture how a scenario might unfold, and you prepare for it in advance.

The bad kind: you believe you already understand something, so you never ask. The misunderstanding surfaces later, usually at the worst possible moment, and a contingency plan gets built in a hurry, after the damage is already done.

I've lived in both camps, more than I'd like to admit. When things go south from the second kind, I still cringe. But there is usually something worth learning in the discomfort.

As I've mellowed with age, my default has shifted. I now try to operate from a simple premise: I don't know most things, and I have no right to expect that others do either. What I understand of a situation is shaped by my own vantage point. Someone standing a few metres to my left is looking at something slightly different, even when we're looking at the same thing.

This matters most in a strategy room. A plan is only as sound as the ground it's built on, and that ground is rarely audited properly. Everyone nods along in the meeting. Everyone assumes everyone else is picturing the same thing. Weeks later, in the delivery, it becomes clear that half the room understood "priority", or "done", or "urgent" to mean something else entirely.

Foundations matter. A strategy built on the wrong assumption doesn't fail loudly at first. It fails quietly, in the gap between what was said and what was heard. By the time anyone notices, the cost has already compounded.

So maybe the more useful habit isn't trying to know more. It's asking more.

A thought to sit with this week: where in your work, or your relationships, are you currently assuming agreement that was never actually confirmed?