Assumptions Anyone?

There's an old saying about assumptions. Remember?

Have you ever found yourself disagreeing with someone - wondering how in the heck they could see the situation in their way? Only to find that their perspectives were based on dramatically different assumptions than your own? Now think about the impact of those assumptions on the task at hand.

Social media gives power to our assumptions.

Social media enables all of us to make our assumptions known. We can state them in blog posts, Tweets, FB posts and YouTube videos. If we're viewed as leaders in our fields - our assumptions are often taken as facts by our audiences. Audiences make the assumption that experts check their facts and only state the truth.

Wow, a never-ending circle of assumptions.

How about this for an example?

"I'd say Google is seriously worried about Bing. Of course, for them $3M is a rounding error"

Said Tweet appeared in my stream during the Super Bowl - commenting on Google's ad. My first thought was, "You gotta be kidding me." But then some prominent Tweeps RT'd in agreement.

WOW. That made no sense to me. Why would anyone assume that just because Google bought a Super Bowl ad they were afraid of Bing? Let's see:

1. SuperBowl ads are expensive, so to buy one, Google must be desperate?
2. Google must be desperate about Bing - because it's from Microsoft?
3. Google's ad was really nice - so they must be worried to do something that great?

I'll never know for sure why these folks saw Google in fear. I have a suspicion though. The media has been hyping the battle between Microsoft and Google for all its worth. Audiences listen to that hype, and over time they come to believe that Google is quaking in its boots thanks to Bing. That assumption - fueled by the media, social and public - leads to a conclusion that Google spent $3M to buy Super Bowl ads all because of Bing.

Others didn't share these assumptions. Since Google holds a significant leadership position in the search space, their assumption about the Super Bowl ad was they demonstrated leadership. And had a great advertising team, since Google had the best ad of the Super Bowl. It does seem that $3M is, indeed, a rounding error in Google's marketing budget.

Such is the power of two different assumptions to drive two different pictures of the same exact situation. Now think about how different the resulting two business courses would be - if they were based on those two diverse assumptions.

So what's my point?

Assumptions waste a lot of energy and cost a lot of time and money. We need more facts, more truths and more opinions based on those facts and truth. Let's leave hype and buzz out of the equation as well.

Think what we could do if we focused all that energy, time and money on an insatiable pursuit of the truth?

Its beats being a donkey's cousin, now doesn't it?