The silent killer of your problem-solving: implicit assumptions
If you make mistakes in problem-solving, you make your work much harder. The most damaging mistakes are implicit assumptions because they are invisible. Learn how to spot and eliminate them.
We all know that problem-solving is the most fundamental skill in consulting.
What I often see in my coaching work is that consultants usually make lots of mistakes in critical thinking without even knowing it.
Critical thinking is the most fundamental part of problem-solving. You can have good or bad critical thinking. Depending on that, you will be a good or bad problem-solver.
That’s where mistakes originate.
Then, they manifest in all kinds of nasty things, like incorrect solutions, trivial answers, poor judgments, random slides, unnecessary rework, wasted time, and sleepless nights. You can continue this list for a long time.
But here’s the catch.
It’s extremely hard to diagnose.
These mistakes will seem random and unrelated.
Then, consultants wonder why they can’t work well.
Why is everything they do wrong? Why are partners never satisfied? Why do all the mistakes seem to be new, and they can’t spot any patterns? How to fix that?
As a result, they start to believe they are not smart enough for this job.
But in fact, there’s a pattern in your mistakes.
It usually happens deep down in your critical thinking. But then, they manifest in random ways.
It’s good news for you.
If you can fix your critical thinking, the whole branches and categories of your mistakes will be eradicated. That’s how you improve your performance.
But today, I want to discuss one specific, the most common, and damaging logical mistake.
Implicit assumptions.
We all know what an assumption is. If you don’t, let me introduce it first.
Assumption - A belief you treat as true for now, used to move the analysis forward when data is missing or incomplete.
You need assumptions to progress your thinking and use them in building your arguments and conclusions.
An implicit assumption is an assumption that you are making unknowingly. But you use it in your arguments and conclusions nevertheless.
If an implicit assumption happens to be wrong, your whole argument and solution crumbles.
You will be surprised how often it happens.
Usually, partners are good at spotting implicit assumptions because they look at your solutions with an impartial view.
When it happens, you will feel embarrassed about missing such an obvious thing. And your partners will think that you are not so smart.
Okay, we covered a lot of theoretical ground. I know it can be hard to digest.
Let me give you an example.
For example, you make the following statement:
“If it’s snowing, schools will be closed.”
It’s a reasonable statement. And we know it’s true from our life experience.
But wait. Let’s challenge that. Ask yourself: Why is it true?
If you carefully examine this argument, you will notice that there’s an implicit assumption built in. We assume everyone knows this important piece of context.
Do you want to try to find it yourself? Pause here and think.
Okay, let’s write the full argument.
It’s snowing.
You live in California. It’s a pretty rare event for this climate.
Authorities don’t plan for that. They don’t have enough snowplowing machines, trucks, and workers.
As a result, there will be a collapse on roads and highways.
Knowing that, authorities proactively cancel school classes to ease the pressure on the transport system.
So here the implicit assumption is that the transport system collapses because of snow in California.
But let’s push our thinking even more.
Imagine, now you travel to Canada. It started to snow there, and you don’t go to school.
The next day, the teacher asks why you didn’t show up. You are surprised and say that because it snowed.
Your teacher asks you: “What does it have to do with school?”
In Canada, snow is a normal thing. Life doesn’t stop because of that.
This is where you will be wrong with your implicit assumption.
So implicit assumptions can be true or can be false. And if they are false, you will find yourself in a world of trouble.
But if you don’t know you are making implicit assumptions, you can’t stress test them.
So be careful.
But how to catch these implicit assumptions?
It’s a very good question. And it’s quite a tough one.
It’s actually one of my fears when I problem-solve.
What if I miss implicit assumptions? That’s why I try to double and triple-check everything.
Here’s the thing.
Our brains are wired to make assumptions.
That’s how it saves energy. It always defaults into System 1 thinking, according to the book “Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman.
That’s why I don’t trust my brain to solve complex problems. I try to double-check every logical step to make sure I am not missing anything.
But the inherent problem here is that it’s hard to check something that you don’t know exists. That’s why you should always be alert and careful not to miss it.
How to do it practically?
Basically, if you think about it, we use implicit assumptions to make some arguments and conclusions. That’s where you must try to catch them.
I use a few test questions.
The best and simplest one is the ‘Why’ question. In our snow example, a simple why question exposed the implicit assumption right away.
Other questions I really like:
“What if this is not true?” or “In what situation is this statement not true?”
They will help to reframe your thinking and consider other potential scenarios and options of the reality that you may be missing.
For example, in our ‘snow’ example, if you ask this question, you’ll realize that this statement won’t be true if snow doesn’t cause a transport collapse.
In what reality is this possible? If authorities are ready for these scenarios and they have enough snowplowing machines, trucks, and workers.
Additionally, that line of thinking will also give you some new insights about the issues you are solving.
Final advice.
Practice at spotting implicit assumptions in your personal life. The more you practice, the better you become.
Actually, we use a lot of implicit assumptions in our relationships. Someone treated you badly, and you instantly think they are bad people. Here’s an implicit assumption.
But they might have some personal issues. Maybe you did something to trigger them. If you think about it, there could be different explanations. But we always resort to the worst one without even checking the basis for that.
Okay, that’s it for implicit assumptions.
But there’s a bigger question.
How do you improve your critical thinking?
This is another great question!
It’s actually the holy grail of consulting.
If you can solve that, you will achieve singularity.
You will solve an intelligence challenge. It’s like having a magic wand. You can solve any problem and do whatever you want.
Of course, you can always do it yourself.
But it’s very difficult to do, mostly because of the obscurity of how it works. The whole critical thinking is like a black box. You don’t know how it works or when it fails you.
This is where coaching is especially helpful.
But I solved this problem in my coaching program.
To work on critical thinking, we use a special type of exercise.
I called it essay problem-solving.
I give consultants a realistic problem to solve.
Instead of doing slides, I ask consultants to write an essay on how they think. Write all their issues, insights, assumptions, conclusions, hypotheses, and solutions. They should write it in a logical and clear way.
We do it in a multi-step way. We play it like a chess game. This way, we simulate the real-life problem-solving environment.
When consultants write their thoughts, it becomes super visible where mistakes originate. And how they affect the whole problem-solving logic.
That’s how you not just learn to spot these mistakes, but also how to do it in the right way. This exercise teaches you how to come up with non-trivial, out-of-the-box solutions.
The impact of this learning is tremendous.
Basically, you learn how to think in a systematic and robust way. This way, you can solve any tough problems that are thrown at you. And your leaders will think you are a genius. But you just have a robust and reliable system.
If that’s something you are interested in doing, and you want to improve your critical thinking and overall problem-solving,
We will discuss your pain points, challenges, and aspirations. No strings attached, just straight answers to your biggest questions.
If you want to learn more about my coaching program, read this post:
The coaching program for MBB consultants.