Immunity to Change: Post #6--Big Assumptions

Column 4: The Big Assumptions
a. Here we create a tool for adaptive (not merely technical) change.
b. Best way to disrupt the anxiety management or immunity-to-change system is to identify a core assumption that sustains it.
c. We don’t see these assumptions as artificial mental constructs, rather we see them as THE truth…the way the world really is.
d. When we make “big assumptions” they can take us down a destructive path. Like a pilot saying to his co-pilot: “Hey, what’s a mountain goat doing way up here in the cloud bank?!”
e. We have an uncanny ability to filter out countervailing evidence in order to support our own assumptions (ladder of inference)—much to our own peril.
f. What are the BIG assumptions underlying your Column 3 commitments?
g. To identify your big assumptions, try the following criteria:
i. You may absolutely regard the assumption as true.
ii. Each big assumption makes the commitments in Column 3 inevitable.
iii. Unveiling big assumptions opens you up to a much bigger world to explore. Will often lead to “ah-ha” moments.
h. Taking assumptions from being invisible to visible leads to disrupting them and making real change.