Managing Your Assumptions
/We can only progress by making assumptions, so it’s doubly important that we pick the ones to trust—and challenge all the others.
When I was asked to define ‘Foresight’ during CatalyzingTheFuture, I focused on managing assumptions. That’s because assumptions allow us to translate our experience of things that have happened into our ideas about what might happen.
Assumptions about the way the world could (or should) be inspire entrepreneurs to persist in their vision against all odds. Assumptions about right and wrong drive the way we act with others, the way we spend our valuable time, and the way we vote. And assumptions about the things that matter to the people we are with impact the way we give our best.
The challenge of foresight is to separate the assumptions we trust from the ones we question. The beliefs we hold to be true from the things that we postulate. A small, carefully curated set of beliefs is a wonderful thing. But when that set becomes too large, we risk making poor decisions. We decrease our risk of success.
It’s another way that the techniques I wrote about recently can help nurture foresight.
Ass+You+Me
What the biggest decision you have to make next week? What assumptions will you base that decision on? Which of those assumptions are you certain of, and how will you test the others before taking the leap?
(And here’s another technique that might help you decide.)
Really enjoyed the global roundtable I shared with David Cushman, Jeremy Denisty and James Key Lim. Check out the recording here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2P5E1821ao beginning at 58:14.
A reminder that I’m offering a couple of workshops this Fall— Transforming Your Outcomes by Reducing Unknowns and my Making ideas happen Workshop Series. If you’d like the deets, email me at graham@primeFusion.ca and assume that I’ll provide further details.
Trusting Technology is a book about forming ideas, exploring opportunities with customers and colleagues, and building your future together. Order you copy here.