Making ASS out of U and ME… don’t get me wrong, I’m not abusing anyone but just trying to explain the meaning of ASSUME… I didn’t find any better way to express my (personal) feelings for this killer. Lemme share something…
Once in London, a 6ft 5in tall, well built black guy was roaming around on streets. He stopped near a white girl and asked “Do you know what can I do with my long long hands and big big lips?”, the girl screamed and ran away. He then asked the second girl the same thing, she too ran away. After getting similar reactions from many girls, there was one (so called) cool girl puffing out smoke said “yeah… show me” and the guy finally got the chance and used his hands to play with his lips and made a sound like brrmm brrmm brrmm.
Well, the joke ends here but it actually wasn’t one but a true example of how assumptions and perceptions can go wrong. It’s a general perception in white people about black guys that they have a criminal mind and in the above scenario, all the girls considered the same perception and assumed that the guy has guts to ask first then ravage them.
Personally I’m of the opinion that things can be much more smoother just if people try to have some patience and trust and start clearing up the doubts before making their own assumptions about anything and anyone. In our daily lives, we usually make wrong (sometimes right) assumptions; jokes as flirt, flirts as love, passion as feelings (well, I guess these are the most realistic examples which you people might have experiences at one or the other end) and many other similar feelers.
How about discussing about assumptions in our businesses… yes the companies you work for or the businesses you run, they are mostly based on assumptions. Don’t believe me… well the biggest assumption is that the business is going to be a success. Best businesses focus on critical assumptions and work on their rationalization. Be it market size, acceptable pricing, consumer behaviour, time to commercialize… these all are assumptions being made on various parameters. Formally we call this as Business Forecasting or even in simpler terms, these can be called as CALCULATED ASSUMPTIONS & PERCEPTIONS.
Getting caught up in a corporate culture also includes taking on corporate assumptions. Moreover, it is all too easy to assume your customers view your products in the same way that you do and use your products only in the ways you expect them to do. But of course you do understand that it can never happen.
How about introducing an Assumptions Destroyer?? Let’s find a person well versed with various functions of the company and owning a sharp, analytical and creative mind. The primary responsibility of this person (let’s call him Assumptions Destroyer, or simply AD) would be to conduct a brainstorming session with sales, logistics, analytics and production team and listing down all the possible assumptions about the products, services, market and customers. Remember this will be an assumptions listing session, not criticizing and short listing them… just note down everything without a miss.
The next period would be clubbing up similar assumptions and removing the completely irrelevant ones. Over the next couple of weeks, AD should go through all the assumptions and consider them as WRONG. At this step, AD might take help of others… maybe colleagues, customers (if possible) or someone like me (that’s kinda self promotion 🙂 ).
Well, while considering the assumptions as wrong, our AD should ask the following questions
- If the assumption is wrong, what alternative situation might exist?
- Conduct another brainstorming session on first point to generate further ideas.
- If point two requires significant business change, how can we test the original assumption and the alternative one?
- Perform the tests.
- Draw up an action plan if the changes are necessary.
- Compile all such action plans and turn it into a grand action plan… and go implement it.
Well… all this is much easier to pen down but will require ages and mighty efforts to actually implement.
Don’t wanna miss to write this real life example here…
Jobs was of the opinion that 7in tablets can never be a hit among customers… it’s either their classic iPhones or the iPads which can rule the market, and it does for years. Even though when Samsung released their tablets and became a hit too, he never voted to launch the similar sized version. Only after he passed away, Apple introduced iPad Mini and if we look at the figures, they performed much better than the bigger iPads. So, if a visionary like Steve Jobs can make wrong assumptions and perceptions, rest are still levels below… that means all can be forgiven.
I think I’ve penned down a lot of things here and would like to mention one last time… IF YOU ARE MAKING ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT SOMETHING OR SOMEONE… BETTER CONFRONT FIRST TO GET THE FACTS CLEAR. Professionally I think I’ve made a very valid point and a workable plan to make the best use of assumptions, but in your personal lives… manage it on your own dude. ALL THE BEST 🙂
The Unconventional Optimist 