In a planning session if you find yourself or others saying, “I think that” or “I feel like”, you need to watch out. You’re very close to the Assumption Trap.
A few of us have a March 1st deadline for the next iteration of one of our Indigitous sponsored projects, GodChat.tv.
We had to get the user experience flow diagram to the programers and we kept getting stuck… in our theory, and our assumptions, dreams and wishes.
This is an easy trap to fall into when you are doing something new. You have to have somewhere to start your planning after all. Here’s how to get out of the trap.
1. Set a time limit for theorizing
This is an endless cycle that usually ends with the loudest voice or most forceful personality getting their way. (Just a hint, those people aren’t always right). Once people have been heard, the team leader needs to move to #2.
2. Turn your theory into a testable hypothesis
If you don’t do this, you end up trying to disprove theory with assumption. For our project the hypothesis is this: “We believe existing relationship lowers the potential energy needed to ignite a discipleship/mentoring process.”
Be careful to design your user experience to test the hypothesis. This takes discipline to stay focused.
3. Use data to ruthlessly evaluate your hypothesis
Once you have data, there is nowhere for theory to hide. No more “I think” or “I feel like”. If you designed the test correctly, the data will tell you what worked and what didn’t. Be sure to separate yourselves from the hypothesis. Let the data attack the theory and not the people behind the theory.
4. Make changes for greater fruitfulness
What we really care about is the effectiveness/fruitfulness of the tool or campaign. Use the observations from the data to make purposeful changes to the process and continue to track what happens.
To give you an example of how this is done, here is a blog post by Oumar from Mali (if you don’t read French, open in Google Chrome and let it translate for you). He settled on a plan and is now using metrics to evaluate the effectiveness and adjust his strategy.