Mistakes are the right decisions made on the wrong assumptions. And that’s OK.

I recently read an interesting article with the title “If you make assumptions, you make mistakes”.? It is a very insightful article about the risks of making bad assumptions. But while I absolutely agree with the statement that assumptions may lead to mistakes, I do not share the belief that making mistakes, nor making assumptions, is actually a bad thing.

When it comes to mistakes, of course we want to avoid catastrophic ones; those that destroy value dramatically. However, it is actually the little mistakes help us to move closer to making better choices in the future. This is the way evolution has worked for millions of years: Trial and error. 2 Steps forward, one step back.

But today I want to look at the other word, let's look at the value of making assumptions.

Many people will make statements like "Don't assume" or "facts first".?But here’s the funny thing about facts:?

Everything is true, until it isn’t.

Therefore everything, including what is considered to be fact, is an assumption. And as a result, assumptions cannot be avoided.?

Aristotle’s physics were considered true facts until Newtonian physics replaced it. And then Newton’s model for gravity was true until Einstein’s general theory of relativity was considered to be the new true instead.?So facts are actually strongly supported assumptions! We assume something to be true, therefore it is fact.

This, however, does not mean that all assumptions are equal. Assumptions are influenced by information, by personal preferences, by biases and by many other elements. You can have good assumptions and bad assumptions. Assumptions can be a necessary mechanism to make change happen, or an excuse to keep things as they are. Assumptions can be supported by lots or research, intelligence and careful consideration, or be formed by an uninquisitive and lazy mind as a shortcut to avoid the work.?

Let's look at an example that we could face in our business. When thinking of building a new feature for our clients (and spending a lot of time and money), we could make the following assumptions:

• A lazy assumption: I assume that my clients will want it, so we will go and build it.?
• A moderate assumption: A client confirmed that they would like it, so we assume that all clients will like it, and we go and build it.?
• A balanced assumption: Several clients confirm that they like the proposed feature, and we assume that the sample is big enough to represent all clients, and therefore should go and build it.?

Of course, all of the assumptions could end in the negative as well. But even if we followed the balanced approach, we still cannot take “Our clients like the new feature” as a fact, because we are still making lots of assumptions in the process. We would still be assuming that:

• Our description of the feature was clear enough.
• The person that described the feature to the client was objective enough.
• The persons that we asked at our client (which could be a firm of 10,000 people) accurately represents the majority of employees at that firm, and was not influenced by personal biases and preferences.?
• And so on.?

Now, the outcome of this could be that you should never take a decision, because one of the many assumptions underlying that decision might be wrong. This is what most often happens in complex challenges. But this only leads to indefinite procrastination on things that deep down you know need to change.?So the best way to prove that an assumption is right or wrong is to test it in the real world.

And that brings us back to the main fear of assuming things: "What if I make a mistake?"

Well, when talking about mistakes, Thomas Edison said:

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

And the study of NLP makes one important presupposition in its work, which is:

“There is no failure, only feedback.”

Now, you may say "yeah yeah, that all sounds nice, but in our business we cannot afford to make mistakes". If this is case, I would ask myself the following questions:??

• What is the impact of getting this wrong? If the answer is “too high”, the scope of the change is too big.
• How fast could we pivot in another direction if the assumption proves to be wrong? If the answer is ”too long”, the scope of the change is too big.?
• When can we expect the first benefits from the change? If the answer is “Longer than 3 months”, the scope of the change is too big.?

The approach we take at Governance.com towards change has always been to advance change in small steps that are started today, and not tomorrow. We prefer to change things one process at a time, and to keep things simple. Rather than designing a complex solution to a monster challenge in isolation, talk to people, gather information, make a balanced assumption on what is likely the quickest way to make a concrete improvement, decide, build, test and refine.?

This method will always lead to incremental improvements. Positive change is not always a linear process but it is more important to move in the right direction than getting it right the first time.

Don't focus on avoiding mistakes. Just improve your assumptions and test them as soon as possible by advancing in small steps.

Operating without knowing all the facts may require courage and persistence, but when we know things are advancing in a controlled way, it is much easier to pivot our approach when things don't go exactly the way we assumed. And the facts? Well, those are going to be different tomorrow anyway!