Assumptions are the enemy of everything

I have a bit of a thing about assumptions.

Mainly because I think most of us are walking around with hundreds of them without realising they’re assumptions at all. I definitely am. Things I’ve decided about people, work, my business, probably my husband. Somewhere along the way I’ve gathered enough evidence — or sometimes absolutely no evidence — and they’ve quietly become facts.

Businesses do exactly the same thing.

We know our customer. People buy us because of X. Our older customers won’t do that. Gen Z wants this. Price is the biggest barrier. People won’t pay more. Customers care about sustainability. That competitor isn’t really a threat. We tried that before. This is how the category works.

Fine.

My question is always: how do we know?

And I don’t mean that in a gotcha way. I genuinely want to know. Did customers tell us recently? Is it in the data? Have we observed the behaviour? Did we test it? Was it true five years ago? Did somebody who has been in the business for twenty years say it in a meeting and everyone nodded? Or have we repeated it so many times that nobody remembers where it came from anymore?

Businesses need assumptions. We couldn’t possibly re-prove every single thing we believe every morning before opening our laptops. Experience matters. Institutional knowledge matters. Gut instinct matters.

The danger is when we stop knowing which things are facts and which things are assumptions.

That’s when entire strategies start getting built on foundations nobody has checked for years.

So get them out. What do we know? What do we think we know? What are we assuming? What have we got absolutely no idea about?

Someone thinks customers won’t pay £20 more. Someone else thinks they will. Brilliant. We have something to test.

Someone thinks younger customers don’t buy because the brand feels old. Someone else thinks they simply don’t have the need yet. Great. Let’s find out.

An assumption becomes much less dangerous the second you remember that it is one.