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How to Mitigate the Danger of Assumptions

Writer's picture: Laura Hope GoldstoneLaura Hope Goldstone

...and the undeniable benefits of doing so


Assumptions are dangerous in any forum – personal, professional, or otherwise. Unfortunately, they are often ingrained in our subconscious; we tend to act on them without realizing they exist, but they are omnipresent and influence outcomes whether we like it - or even know it - or not.


When was the last time you acted on an assumption? Perhaps these examples sound familiar:

  • You assume Katie doesn't want to attend an event, so you don’t invite her. But she actually would have loved to have gone. Katie loses out on an experience and may interpret your actions as being hurtful, damaging your friendship. Worse, she may not speak to you as warmly thereafter, and you may not understand why.

  • You may assume your boss will only respond to certain formal proposals, so you heavily filter your approach and only bring up questions in a scheduled, formal manner. However, in reality, she would actually prefer a real-time, idea-generating workflow. Therefore, your assumptions might hurt your relationship, innovation, and success.

  • If a football team playing on defense assumes the offense is going to run the ball, but they end up passing it, their assumptions in their preparation may hurt their execution, resulting in potential success for the other team.


As you can see, these situations are very common and it may seem as though they might be difficult or even impossible to predict. As such, some assumptions can be necessary sometimes - they happen in every discipline in business, they happen subconsciously in our social interactions, and they happen in our daily lives: We can't know everything about our audience, so we sometimes have to make an assumption so that we can test their reaction to our product; we can't know what our competitor will do next, so we may have to use assumptions to predict future actions based on past actions and the current environment; we can't know whether a friend will like a Christmas gift, but we can assume they will based on their preferences, interests, and comments about similar items made in the past. The idea is to be as strategic and data-driven as possible; to prepare before acting; to communicate clearly; and to work on increasing awareness. By putting in the extra effort, the hope is that assumptions won't work against you and that you will instead be leaning on data and strategy to make better informed decisions and actions. To help sustain the success of your work, it would also be best to commit to making small adjustments to improve continually rather than relying on assumptions for high-profile decisions or growing stale and requiring a more major overhaul down the road.


Regardless of how you frame it, assumptions can negatively impact situations and damage relationships, sometimes beyond repair, if they are not recognized and mitigated. Fortunately, there are several ways to alleviate the risk of assumptions and build trust in the process, especially in a business setting.


3 ways to mitigate or prevent assumptions:

  • Practice self-awareness

  • Communicate clearly and often

  • Document processes


Self-awareness


It would be practically impossible to eliminate assumptions from our minds entirely, so instead, we must be aware of the fact that they do exist and make a conscious effort to catch them and reroute them. Recognizing an assumption when it arises is the golden standard to adjusting your approach to yield a positive outcome. But you will likely not be able to recognize every assumption that floats through your head immediately after reading this; you may have to work on it from the ground up and aim to form a habit of being increasingly more aware of assumptions as they form in our minds, eventually being able to reframe them before they are implemented in our actions.


One great way to start becoming aware of the assumptions we make every day is to evaluate the past and learn from it. Think about a recent situation in which you made assumptions before acting. In fact, you can probably think of any situation and try to name all of the assumptions at play. When an employee comes to work, there is an assumption being made that they will work the full day. When a project is assigned, there are assumptions around skills, strategy, timing, expectations, roles, and communication. When you have been trained on a tool, there is an assumption moving forward that you are able to use that tool in a variety of situations. When putting together a business plan, you are making assumptions about bandwidth, resource allocation, audience, future environmental factors, and more.


Assumptions happen at both a high level (such as in our presence, knowledge, and roles) as well as granularly. The words we use reflect assumptions we are making, often subconsciously; even the gestures we make reflect assumptions we have already made in our minds about people or situations.


Start with a situation that happened recently – a meeting, an email, a problem, a project, an interaction, anything – and name the assumptions that you made. Then, think about the outcome you were preparing for by making that assumption. In the next part of the exercise, pretend your assumption was wrong. What danger might you have faced? What would have been lost if your assumption was incorrect? The more you look back, the better you will be at recognizing assumptions in the moment; you could incorporate this strategy into your communication by simply asking yourself, "Is this an assumption?" Even posing the question will help you shift your mindset and become more open to adjusting your approach to mitigate risk and yield better outcomes.


The more you reflect and become comfortable with evaluating assumptions you make in your everyday life, the more apt you will be at recognizing and adjusting assumptions in real-time.


Communication


Sometimes, an assumption is made because we don’t want to communicate: We may be afraid of confrontation, we may not be sure how to frame a question, or we may be uncertain of the other person’s reaction. But it is important to note that the danger of an incorrect assumption is greater than the fear of confrontation or poor communication. While it requires a bit of vulnerability and some effort in order to craft it properly, effective communication can help mitigate the risk of incorrect assumptions and even build trust, rendering all parties better off in the end.


For example, if you want to ask your boss a question but you glance toward her desk and you notice her brow is furrowed, you may assume that she is too busy or in a bad mood and would not want to hear your question. You decide to work on your project without getting answers to your questions, and in the end, your work is not aligned with her strategy and requires multiple rounds of edits; your boss may be upset that you weren’t thinking strategically enough while you may be upset about receiving negative feedback after being hung out to dry – a lose-lose. But asking your boss if she has a moment to chat with you about the project would have given you an opportunity to have your questions answered, and your boss could have responded positively OR she might have acknowledged that she was busy now but could set up a time with you to discuss the project later. In this scenario, she recognizes that you were seeking assistance and that it is up to her to make the time to help you. In the end, you will get what you need to do your job confidently, and she will be happy with the result.


Even better, if you communicated ahead of time, proactively asking your boss about her communication preferences – to which she may reply, “you can always check my calendar for times I’ve blocked off,” “feel free to email me to set up a meeting instead of approaching me randomly,” or “sure, I'm fine with you coming right over to my desk, even if you think I’m busy” – then both parties were given a chance to voice their needs, expectations were set, and the danger of assumptions was mitigated before it ever occurred.


In another corporate business example, say your marketing team assumes that your audience will like a certain product. That assumption could cost thousands or even millions of dollars (and priceless brand reputation) if you are wrong. You may not be sure how to conduct market research, but that shouldn’t stop you from a) finding out how to conduct research using a cost-effective solution and b) innovating and crafting the appropriate communication to fuel your programs. At the end of the day, polling your audience and getting a pulse of their needs and interests will help you iterate your product so it appeals to them and fills a gap, enabling a data-driven approach backed by communication rather than relying on potentially erroneous – and costly – assumptions.


Documentation


Documentation has endless benefits: Whenever something is documented, it can be referred back to in the future as a guide, it can be templatized for greater efficiency, it can be used to teach others as a training tool, it can represent evidence or support justification, and it can provide accountability for all involved. There is virtually no downside to documenting processes, plans, and trackers.


In this situation, documentation can help mitigate the risk of assumption-making by laying the groundwork at the start of a project (by providing a brief that sets expectations), keeping everyone on the same page throughout (with shared access and frequent communication), and serving as written proof (e.g., if someone made an incorrect assumption that led to an issue but the correct information was already provided in the document). The person or persons creating the document for the first time will need to think ahead, considering assumptions or questions and providing details and answers where possible. Stating something as an assumption, then anticipating the outcome and planning for multiple possibilities will strengthen your strategy, especially when communicated clearly, then documented, shared, and updated as necessary.


Remember that process documents may evolve to reflect changes in the process, so as more questions pop up, you may want to add more sections to your documents ahead of time to provide a more comprehensive strategy from the get-go, mitigating the risk of assumptions causing irreversible damage further into a project’s timeline.




Positive effects of alleviating assumptions


In your efforts to prevent and mitigate assumptions, you will grow self-awareness, enhance communication, and improve documentation practices, thus building trust, disseminating strategy earlier on in processes, becoming more efficient, and empowering others to feel more confident in their roles. Assumptions affect us all and can be alleviated by anyone at any time. Any work you do today to relieve the risk of incorrect assumptions is more than you did yesterday and will have a positive domino effect as a result. Start small, and start with yourself, then learn, grow, and evolve as you go.

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