I was in a meeting the other day when it suddenly hit me that a long running discussion I had been part of was completely wrong because we had never questioned the core assumptions underpinning our various arguments. There was a fatal flaw in our logic that prevented either of us from being correct and getting to a resolution. We thought that the people we were dealing with were acting rational around a set of circumstances when we suddenly discovered that they were acting on a completely different basis!
It is amazing how our unspoken assumptions can cause us to completely miss the boat on a topic. One moment we are going along happily and the next we’ve been blown to oblivion by something that came seemingly from nowhere.
In that moment it often becomes blindingly obvious that you skipped a critical connection – left someone out of the mix, didn’t ask about the key relationship or looked at the data completely wrong. Usually this is because we don’t take the time to vet the problem statement fully. We can take things at face value and forget to look for the masks or hidden agendas. That extra time up front can be the most important you invest.