Feb 6, 2018
Try this if you are facing a problem today.
Test your assumptions and see how you can move forward.
Every day, we navigate through our world by a set of guidelines that exist in our heads. Some of these guides come from our education, some from culture, some of our genes. We have ethics that tell us how to behave around and towards others, minimizing negative impact.
There is “common sense”, a set of rules that ironically, everyone defines differently.
Then, of course, we have our own rules and guides that we have picked up over the span of our lifetime, worldviews and pre-made reactions and opinions, experiences and stories.
All these “world interpreters” are useful and help us stay sane and safe.
But they also block our progress and sabotage ourselves.
I’d like to give you a tool to analyze your thoughts, in order to make better decisions and solve problems. It’s a mental model I call “testing your assumptions”.
The idea is really quite easy: when you are facing difficulties, try to take a moment and find out what assumptions you are working under. Then, find out if these assumptions are true. Ideally, replace them with knowledge.
Let’s go over it.
We are facing obstacles everywhere, all day long, it’s part of what makes life interesting and exciting. But too many problems can cause stress and be detrimental to your physical and mental well-being. Luckily, most of these obstacles are things that we can solve, relying on our knowledge and worldviews.
What about the problems that are not easy to solve? They might actually come from within yourself!
Let me give you an example. I was working on an idea for a small gadget and had built and tested a prototype. My next move was to show this to retailers and see if they might be willing to sell it. For this, I needed to order a first production run of items, because my prototype was just that: a quick hack in order to test the idea. But having the items manufactured but me in a difficult situation: what if I spent the money on the production, but then the retailers don’t want it? It would be a failed investment. I delayed the decision and didn’t move forward.
All I did was based on my assumptions. In the beginning, I thought I’d build a prototype to test the idea. The assumption was that it would be a good way to get user feedback. It worked — testing things early is a useful tool. The next assumption was that it would be useful to sell this in retail. This is just what I thought, even though I didn’t really know if it was true. Maybe another way (online) would be much more effective? But for now, I followed this assumption. The next idea was that retailers want to see the finished product, not a prototype before they place an order. It sounds reasonable, but how would I know? I haven’t even talked to one retailer, blocking myself by the belief that I needed to do other things first. Researching about manufacturing, making Excel sheets with prices, all of this was based on the assumption that A) I would be able to sell it retail, B) I needed to have a finished product to show.
These thoughts blocked my progress.
Everything we do is based on some sort of “action-reaction” pattern. Especially in startups, we work so hard on solutions for problems that we sometimes forget to test our assumptions.
I remember a story about a startup from some years ago. It might have happened at Google, but that is not really important.
Every time an employee was presenting a new idea to the CEO, the answer would be the same: “Do you have evidence/ data to support this?”
Effectively, they were asked if they had tested their assumptions. Does that problem really exist? Do people really think about this? Do they notice this? Is this a problem we should be solving?
Solving problems for yourself and others comes down to a series of decisions. Of course, we have to make assumptions and we have to rely on our and other’s knowledge and experience. We don’t have to question everything — although one could argue that in questioning everything, we can uncover secrets and new solutions.
Many successful companies have managed to do so: we, collectively, have been making the assumption that it’s best to look for hotels and guesthouses to stay abroad. For millenia, it seemed the safest and most sensible choice.
Until someone tested it: maybe that’s not true and people actually might enjoy staying at a stranger’s place. (This, in turn, brought up new problems and assumptions.) The point is: one of the biggest companies in the tourist business (AirBnB, in case you haven’t guessed) is based on the idea that we are absolutely willing to stay at a stranger’s place if the general conditions are right.
When you assume something, you substitute knowledge with guessing. This is useful, up to a certain degree. We can’t know everything, but we also shouldn’t be guessing at everything.
Take a look at your biggest problem. What assumptions are you making about it that you haven’t tested? Can you test those ideas? What would be an easy and fast way to do this?
Your assumptions are a good tool. Find out how far you can trust them. Examine them: where are they from? Where did I pick them up? Are they stable enough? If you have doubts, challenge them. Pick them apart and put them under the microscope. Replace them with knowledge if necesary.
Have you made progress by testing your assumptions? Let me know!
Thanks for reading.
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