WATCH: How Do You Check Your Assumptions?

Today, I’d like to talk about ‘How to Avoid the Dangers of Making Assumptions’. And there’s a very nice model, by a guy called, Chris Argyris. Who wrote a book, back in the 1990s, called Overcoming Organizational Defenses?

Ladder of Inference

The way he illustrated  it is that there’s a reality that is ‘Common Reality’ that a large group of people can agree on. These are ‘Facts’, irrefutable facts. However, what we do is with our little brains, because there are limitations in our brains.

Assumptions

We will ‘Select little bits of that Reality’ and then interpret it in a particular way, based

on our ‘Assumptions’.

Beliefs

That’s what gives us our ‘Actions’. So, for example with the lockdown, everyone had to just lock down and then we realized that actually we could still communicate a lot via zoom. So, we were able to do a lot more remote working.

Many businesses believed before lockdown  “that remote working would never work for us, it’s just not viable. It’s not possible now I’m seeing a lot of clients actually go completely virtual. Were they’re just dropping their offices all together!

With us, what we found was, “Oh, training is so much, you know, more engaging when it’s in a room”. But we’ve now found lots of ways to be able to shift that. And go, “Well what’s the reality? The reality is that we’re still interacting. We can still see people; they can still see us.” And then if we take a selected amount of that reality, we go “Okay what is it that we need to do to make this really engaging?”

Interpretation

That reality, to say, “Okay, if we redesign the way that we do our programs”,

check our ‘assumptions’ and go, “No, it cannot necessarily be the same as it was  in a room. We need to use different techniques. We need to use different approaches”. And our ‘belief’ is that is possible. By investigating, by exploring new ways of doing things. And, that gives us different actions.

Actions 

There’s still a lot of people quite stuck in the old way of thinking. And, they’re just saying, “Oh we’ve got a training program, we’ll just do it online”. And, it’s really boring and not engaging. And they go, “Oh this doesn’t work, it’s really bad”. Were in fact, what we’re finding is with a different way of looking at things. That a lot of the trainings we’re now doing have more impact because of the way, the styles that we’re using, and the interactions and innovative techniques that we’re using. So, I’d like you to look at whenever you’re in a situation where assumptions or actions are being taken. And you’re like, “Why are they doing that?”

 Reality

People are looking at. What are the ‘Assumptions’ they’re making. What are the  ‘Beliefs’ they have that give them those actions. So, when it comes to Assumptions.

Stay Curious!

With best regards,

David Klaasen

Talent4Performance help business leaders clarify complexity. We inspire people and drive continuous performance improvement, so they can convert thinking into action and results.

©David Klaasen – 2023