Betting Your Ass-Umptions
I had a very interesting conversation the other day with a man I shall call “Number 104” as part of my goal of “a thousand cups of coffee”. And please consider this article your personal invitation to be one of my thousand cups.
Number 104’s company is undergoing significant changes on a number of fronts: recent purchase by overseas company, shift in procurement strategies, lessening power of traditional project management into centralized functions. They are struggling with handling the multiple conversions, but these changes are necessary and cannot be avoided. Oh, and add to the list, the implementation of a new SAP system to match that of the acquiring company.
Although he is not leading this convolution of “chances to make the wrong choice”, he is deeply involved in two of them: the SAP conversion and the reorientation of project leadership. He expressed his frustrations in this career-defining stage of his work very succinctly when he commented, “The main problem that I run into is that no one is willing to challenge their own assumptions.”
He had asked himself to consider why that might be the case, and his realization had been that people operate every day on a set of assumptions. We assume, when we drive, that stepping on the brake will stop the car. We assume that other drivers will follow the rules of the road, staying in their lane and stopping at red lights. Without these assumptions, our driving lives would slow to a crawl.
At work, we assume that the office will be open in the morning when we get there. We assume that our co-workers will arrive. We assume that we will have paper, pencils, computers, work spaces… well, you get the picture. And in the main, we can count on most of our assumptions being valid and holding true. But what happens when our assumptions are not met?
Assumptions are the foundation of our belief system. Chris Argyris, well-known business thinker, author and professor at Harvard, created a tool he called the “Ladder of Inference”, intended to help parse our thought process into identifiable and manageable segments. This ladder has six rungs, which operate in this manner:
- We observe real data, but
- We select which of these observed data to consider as we
- Affix meaning to our observations which lead us to
- Make assumptions which then drive us to certain
- Conclusions which form the basis for our
- Beliefs which are the ultimate basis for all of our
- Actions.
Right smack in the middle of everything are those pesky old assumptions. And whence did they come? Meaning which we applied to data, but not accurate meaning applied to all observed data. Instead we had a step in between where we only considered “selected” data in affixing meaning. Therein lies the rub.
As Number 104 realized, and practiced, he needed to question the source of assumptions that he and others were making, both in the SAP implementation and in the project leadership changeover. He asked, as should you, “On what grounds am I entitled to this assumption?” I sent him a copy of the essay, “The Ethics of Belief”, published by William K. Clifford in 1877, which outlines the obligation of the prudent inquirer before establishing “beliefs”. I have included a link here for those of you inclined to read the entire essay. And for those not so inclined, here is Clifford’s own summary of the matter [but the emphasis is mine]:
- We may believe what goes beyond our experience, only when it is inferred from that experience by the assumption that what we do not know is like what we know.
- We may believe the statement of another person, when there is reasonable ground for supposing that he knows the matter of which he speaks, and that he is speaking the truth so far as he knows it.
- It is wrong in all cases to believe on insufficient evidence; and where it is presumption to doubt and to investigate, there it is worse than presumption to believe.
For Number 104, it was a very helpful link, and it opened his eyes to the wide range of opportunities to be lulled into making assumptions that were not warranted. I would encourage each and every one of you to begin to challenge the assumptions underlying beliefs that will lead to decisions. Your success, and possibly your career, could depend on how well you bet your ass-umptions.
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