Challenge your assumptions - then challenge them again

We can’t achieve much without making assumptions. We do it all the time, without realising it. Examples are assuming that someone coming at us along the street won’t shoot us, that the traffic light will turn green sometime, or that it will grow dark this evening. Good assumptions, based on practical experience, make live simple enough to live.

Progress also starts with assumption. A scientist will make a hypothesis, and run a series of experiments to try to prove or disprove it. A hypothesis is basically a fancy word for a working assumption.

So assumptions are necessary good. But fixed ideas are, I contend, the opposite, the things that stifle growth, individually or at any grander scale.

We all do it. Our assumptions go far wider than traffic lights. Over the years we slip into lazy thinking, disguised as coping strategies. Often it is extreme – think of all the games people play while dating, built around their own assumptions about expectations or fear or superstition. We do it at work too. It simplifies our life and makes us feel better in the same way as a comfort blanket does for a child. But how it blocks our growth.

Society is also built on lazy assumption. And whereas in science it is possible to construct experiments, in economics and social matters that is much harder, because human behaviours are complicated and good controls hard to find. Often, people can “prove” pretty well any assumption they care to make, whether motivated by political belief or selfishness or just misguided goodwill. The assumption becomes the problem.

I very much enjoyed “Super Freakonomics”, a book I read on holiday by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. You can read their blog on http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/author/steven-d-levitt/. The style and viewpoint can be annoyingly American, but you can’t argue that the content isn’t excellent. The approach is to try to turn popular orthodoxy on its head by applying rigorous science, and it works. Of course the limitation is which particular popular orthodoxy comes under challenge.

Back to us as individuals, and I suspect many of us feel we are already quite good about challenging our assumptions. We grew out of comfort blankets ages ago! My plea is that you challenge that very assumption!

I won’t claim to be especially good at this myself, but I do know I have improved, and I also can quote some examples where I’ve learned the hard way how assumptions have got in my way.

A good example is my approach to diversity at work. I always believed in its power, and strove to get a diverse team. But without realising it, I did it from my own limited context. I was using the diversity to validate or repudiate or fine tune my assumptions and my ways of working. Then I had some luck, probably supported by my own laziness in letting my team self-manage more. I came to realise that the biggest value of diverse backgrounds came not at the stage of validating hypotheses but in creating them. Almost by accident, the value multiplied. I’m sure I still have a long way to go, but I know that I was deluding myself before, and suspect many of you will be suffering the same delusive assumption now.

Other examples are in openness and judging. I always believed I was quite open, but a life crisis two years ago led me to greatly expand the group of people I chose to be open with and the subject matter permitted. The result was a step change in my own self awareness and (I believe) effectiveness and happiness too. Can you make that change without a crisis?

On judging, I’ve always been aware of being a bit of an intellectual snob, but found ways to justify it. Again a crisis intervened, and I found myself sitting in the same room as a rotund, modestly dressed, seemingly under-educated, middle aged woman under conditions where I was forced to listen to what she was saying, really listen. And wow, what she said was powerful. And why not? Wisdom is not wholly correlated with education. How much useful wisdom I have wilfully discarded over 50 years of that misguided belief! What about you? And the business you work in?

So my advice is to work on the assumption that you are inhibited by many assumptions, and challenge them with courage and humility. Here are some statements you might make to yourself occasionally.
I am a good listener.
I am an accessible leader.
I value diversity and don’t judge or exercise snobbery.
I hate politics, and am not good at it. Others succeed because they are politicians.
I welcome change.
I take safety in work seriously.
My company has a debt to me for my years of service.
I value peace and humanity above ego and ambition.

In a more social context, you can try some more.
I am not good in large parties (believe me, nor is anyone else!).
The “right” men (or women) don’t find me attractive.
He (she) will leave me unless I keep an eye on him (her).
I am a good lover and considerate partner.
Religion is plainly flawed so cannot offer me anything useful.

At a societal level, progress comes when we finally challenge our assumptions, or dogmas. It is an argument against conservative politics, though so called liberals are usually just as guilty of dogma, just different dogma. It is wonderful how in the last 100 years we have made such progress on female emancipation, sexual acceptance, health, and other areas. In each case, progress has been slowed by dogmatic assumption.

What assumptions might come under scrutiny in coming years? Here are some modest ideas.
Our pay should continue to rise through our career.
We need countries, and countries need armies, and some wars can’t be avoided.
GDP per capita is the least bad measure of progress.
Alcohol is not like smoking or drugs.
Western medical methods are the only way to improve health.
Greedy bosses are an inevitable by product of capitalism.
Democracy as practiced in the West is the least bad system of government. (Or an alternative: what happens in the West is accurately described as Democracy)

All of these will come under challenge as a natural process of responding to crisis (for example I believe the first statement is the key to unlocking the global pensions dilemma). Yet I’m sure we can progress faster and further by challenging earlier and more bravely. Sadly, I’m not holding my breath.

But at a personal level, nothing stops us but ourselves. So start challenging. And challenge me too, please.