In his bestselling book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell explains how we all make assumptions, all the time. Sometimes we get our assumptions right, he says, and sometimes we get them wrong.
Then he gives a tragic example of what can happen when we get our assumptions wrong:
Late one night, in February 1999, Amadou Diallo was sitting outside his apartment block in New York City when four police officers drove past. Deciding he looked suspicious, they backed up their car for a second look. When Diallo didn’t run, they assumed he must be challenging them: “How brazen this man is,” they thought as they got out of their car and walked towards him. And when Diallo reached into his pocket they assumed he was reaching for a gun, opened fire, and killed him instantly. Diallo, an immigrant from Guinea, had assumed the police were friendly. He was reaching for his wallet.
Hopefully, you and I will never face a situation like this. But it illustrates the point: the consequences of making a mistaken assumption can be disastrous.
And in this time of change, three things are increasing:
- The pressure to take decisions in situations we haven’t encountered before
- The likelihood that any assumptions we then make will be based on the way the world used to work, not the way it works now
- The size of the negative consequences if we get our assumptions wrong
If we want to become more antifragile, and use change to become stronger and more valuable, we need to become better at noticing and checking our assumptions. Then we can take better actions.
The first step is to learn to spot the eight commonest types of mistaken assumption:
- Value judgments (“He looks suspicious.”)
- Expectations and shoulds (“I expect him to run.” / “I should show them my ID.”)
- Making assumptions and jumping to conclusions (“He is reaching for a gun.” / “In America, I can trust the police.”)
and also:
- Emotional attachment to a particular outcome
- Making our own actions dependent on the behaviour of others
- Blinkered or extreme thinking
- Mistaking our feelings for truth
- Blaming and scapegoating
The good news is that, once we’ve discovered that we might be making one of these assumptions, we will probably have more time to check it out than than Amadou Diallo and the police officers did. And the negative consequences are likely to be less immediate and dramatic. But this extra time will only be useful if we put it to good use, to take better actions.
Over the next 12 months, do you expect that you will have to take more decisions or fewer decisions in situations you haven’t encountered before? Will the negative consequences of making a mistaken assumption increase or decrease? What actions are you taking to improve your ability to spot and check your mistaken assumptions?
Adapted from Inner Leadership: a framework and tools for building inspiration in times of change.
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