Checking Assumptions: Knowing more over being right

I feel I'm getting progressively better at making progress in all kinds of situations. This a strange-feeling meta-skill but I'll try shed light on what is going on. This skill has enabled me to much better align with whoever I need to work with.

Convincing, storytelling and selling

I used to think I should convince people on the goals and make progress. That is what I thought is the right thing to do. I used to be a project manager way back then. You know: project manager leads. The project manager convinces and informs everyone on what's to be done and when.

My personal problem is that I don't really like to tell people what to do. Coordinating with the team-mates on the football pitch was just fine. I could tell my peers where to move. Business; quite another thing. I've really sucked at telling people that "this what you need to do".

Business is full of the activity of convincing people on the direction. I felt my ideas were often not that great. I was often shy and simply not forthright with my convincing. Most of all, it felt somehow off.

You might wonder why I started with convincing, but I'll tie this together.

Checking assumptions is an art

I've often said that we often don't really know how other people think. You being right however is a matter of other people thinking you are right!

Rightness can be thought objectively. But that's not how humans work. We are deeply subjective and variance is what characterises us. If you take correctness of a statement as a subjective evaluation, then you end up with a much different process of seeing if you are right.

You have to tease out the evaluation of right and wrong from people. I've been learning over years.

Everyday tactics for checking assumptions

Here's a few tactics you can do. Try these out and enjoy both success and failure.

Stating the assumption almost right

The first tactic is simply stating an assumption slightly wrong but still almost of right. If you wish to test if your counterpart agrees, then just make the statement looking like you are not exactly sure. People are quite ready to correct you. It is so human to spot the error and there is such a natural want to fix these errors. You can make this more inviting by forming this into a question: "was it that X is Y (remember to add the minor error)". This sometimes like serving for homerun in baseball. You conversation partner will hit the truth. And the you know how things are too.

Making choices

Sometimes the assumption and answer is not obvious. Then you can give choices. This time, no big preparation is needed. Take your educated guess. Take another and the third plausible guess. Then present these as which is closest choice. If you are close enough, you will hear back which of the assumptions is closest.

Continue with the closest choice and detail out common understanding since you already found common ground.

The choices trick works with plain facts too. Just add few dummy options and see how your conversation partner spills the truth. I know it may feel dubious to add random dummy options to a conversation. Believe me, those choices help even if they feel like they add no value.

Ask you conversation partner to simulate the situation

To check assumptions, you can try get your counterpart to think out the situation where the assumption applies. Don't tell what you are testing. Just set up the scene where the assumption applies. Let's assume for instance that you are testing the assumption that our roadmap items are not well defined. You might say: "Let's take ourselves into a situation where roamap items are used in team planning. What usually happens as people read the roadmap items?". This simulation get the counterpart to think though what they assume happens. Then they tell you what they think will happen. You get often a splendid view on what your counterpart knows and assumes.

Sometimes it happens that people just do not know. They simply don't have the assumption. Then just ask: who might know best. Do the legwork and find out.

You are right but it does not matter

I have written once that network is power and power is the network. In business, you never get big things done by yourself. Big things happen only when a lot of people work toward the same direction.

It is incredibly hard to get somebody to do something they don't want to do. You are most of the time just wasting everyones time then.

It has been said that the only way is to find out what people want and then find a way to align that with the business strategy and objective. Sure you can affect a bit of what people want.

The quickest way usually is to find out what people know, assume and want. Often times the solutions are quite simple - once you know what people assume. It is not about you being right.

What assumptions are you holding that might be worth checking? What would change if you prioritized understanding over being right?