Assumptions
A healthy relationship assumes nothing; it knows. A strong relationship cultivates, harvests, and pushes to adapt, evolve, and improve.
Trust is more important than assuming. Trust begins with a single opportunity. I’ll give you the chance to prove, to do what you say you will. I observe how you follow through. The distance between what’s said and what’s done measures consistency. It’s a boolean that returns as a boomerang when you contrast facts against words. True versus false. Good versus mediocre. With that, your reputation tracking record begins.
Rarely found in my career, I can honestly say that trust comes as a free opportunity welcome gift for you or anyone I meet. I don’t assume you’re good or bad; I listen and keep a record. I’ll try to understand you within your context. We all make mistakes and have bad days. Some have the capacity to be good, while others are genuinely great. Little do great merging both growth to themselves and bringing along those who want to grow with them—this applies to both business and colleagues. Relationships take time, and strength is needed to overcome challenges and failures to be truly solid. I’m never fully confident to say a team is good until I see how they face not only success but failure. What happens when there’s fire and the alarm goes off? I invite you to look sideways, up, and down, with perspective, to understand how people truly are and what they bring to the team.
I wasn’t born yesterday, nor am I a newbie in my current role. I keep my experience as a personal repository, trying to do my best for anyone I come across—whether on a project or during informal conversations.
I might be alone. It wouldn’t be the first time I’m wrong or need to change my mind. All that said, I believe the longer your list of assumptions in a work document, the weaker a relationship is.
An informed decision on partners and clients should be made:
Should this weak relationship remain as it is, or should it be the first step towards creating a solid crisis-proof connection?
And yes, crisis-proof also fits the opportunity-proof arena. In the end, something we are constantly bombarded with is proactiveness (!).
Assumptions differ from shared documented processes and tested knowledge. Mature processes take time, just like relationships. The longer the list of assumptions, the more positions are trying to isolate their rigid status with bigger shields, mainly in case something goes wrong. If you keep writing the same assumptions over and over, something is odd. With experience, shared goals, and the consolidated contributions of different teams, seeded trust flourishes into collaboration, leading to a situation where everyone knows their role. Sheet music is not a list of assumptions but specific actions to be played at the right time. It’s no wonder jamming and improvisation have had such a cultural impact in music.
I find it interesting to encounter assumptions, and I still do. Throughout my career, I’ve focused on auditing, sharing goals, strategy, calendars, and actions—keeping everyone aligned and ensuring we deliver. Perhaps it’s a corporate thing? I know they say size doesn’t matter. Well, in corporate terms, it does, and maybe it shouldn’t.
With strong, healthy relationships, there’s no need to list assumptions. Everyone gives their best, knows their responsibilities, or raises their hand when they find an inconsistency, an error, or if they need help. It’s also common to share lessons learned while on the battleground. You’d be surprised by the positive impact you can make of sharing those!
Good shared goals inspire the creation of flexible frameworks to accomplish missions. Knowledge and ownership become the common language and attitude needed to succeed. It’s about finding solutions rather than excuses, ensuring instructions are clear and understood, and then rolling up sleeves to get the job done diligently.
All of this said, when you are on a good team, you don’t assume; you know. By “team,” I also mean people on different payrolls who collaborate with you to drive the same project to success. I hope you’ve experienced, or will experience, conversations with partners and external consultants as part of the same mission. It can be quite interesting and enjoyable.
Mediocre relationships will always need assumptions because they’ll never be solid. New relationships might need assumptions due to natural lack of shared synergies and a disinterest in defining context and task allocation. Good relationships don’t assume; they know. They build and nurture a single example of what “good” means, putting everyone in a position to contribute with their capacity and motivation—reevaluating, improving, and scaling together.
I can’t face assumptions—maybe because most of the time they’re raised on an ongoing project it’s because they were overlooked. Assumptions become a sacrosanct argument to point fingers. In the end, it’s an energy drain in relationship-building. When facing the unwanted, the true value of values becomes evident in uncertainty. We don’t have all the time we’d like and are limited in resources and capacity, but the half-full part of the glass reveals what we know, what we’ve learned, and what we bring to the table.
It’s a fact that anything can go wrong. Accidents, by definition, are inevitable. The temptation is to conclude that the unknown necessitates holding onto assumptions in our workflows. However, the focus should be on what we can control and leverage to navigate uncertainty.
Finding the win-win isn’t impossible; it just gets buried under overpressured, inefficient, mediocre, and short-term determined agendas.
I remain biassed towards doing good. I know when I’m on a good team, and I can also tell when I’m on a team worth the effort. I also know assumptions were never a key part in any of them.