Assumptions and facts

Danylo Suprun at Unsplash.com

I talk to small business owners as well as startups on a regular basis. They are all seeking advice to grow or scale up the business.

Almost all conversations start with a recap of where they are and what they need to do to get where they want or can potentially be.

Then it becomes a question about what you have on offer snd how it aligns with the market and creating impact or making a difference.

I find that every step along the way the founders and business owners collect data or run market research but often in the absence of that ( could be due to lack of money, time, resources, energy, initiative ) leads to assumptions.

There is nothing wrong with making an assumption, the challenge is that the gap between assumption and facts become blurry for some. This over period of time and becomes a belief system, a fallacy that gets followed like a gospel.

Statements like we will get 1% of the global market. 93% of all statistics are created on the fly. 80% of all data has a location component. 50% of the marketing budget will go waste. So much so that IBM CEO Watson once claimed that the world has room for only 5 computers.

Many of these assumptions you have come across I am sure.

There is nothing wrong with assumptions, but you need to be able to flag them, differentiate them before they become an endemic part of your belief systems and you need a big shake-up before you can move forward.

Sameer Babbar

Sameerbabbar.com