Boeing built the 787 on the assumption that passengers would fly point to point. Airbus built the A380 on the assumption they would fly through hubs. Two serious companies, opposite views of the same future, and billions invested on each side. Neither was foolish. Both made a bet, and only one made it visible enough to test.
Every strategy sits on a bed of assumptions. No executive team decides anything without a view of how the world will unfold. The trouble is not the assumption. It is that the expertise around the table drifts in the ether, never written down, so the plan cannot be tested while it runs and a wrong assumption gets defended because nobody agreed to it in the first place.
Five checks
Know what an assumption is. A short statement of what you believe will happen outside the company during the strategic period. It affects everyone in the market, not just you. "China will be our number one growth market" is a goal, not an assumption. "Demand in China grows faster than Europe for five years" is one.
Draw it. A small graph of the prediction does more for executive debate than a paragraph. It surfaces the gaps.
Quantify it, and give it a probability. Many teams refuse to guess. The budget already guesses; this just makes it honest.
Write the implication. If the assumption holds, what must the company do about products, markets and capabilities? If it breaks, what changes?
Set the trigger. What signal, visible early, tells you the assumption has broken? That is the difference between wait-and-react and a mid-course correction.
Why this is tool one
In the MOVE® system the assumptions sit at the top of the page for a reason. Everything below them, where to play, what to stop, which numbers to watch, is only as good as the bets it rests on. When AI can test an assumption against current data in a day, the only excuse for an untested one is that it was never written down.
Monday
Ask your executive team to write the three assumptions the current plan depends on, separately, without conferring. Compare the lists. The gaps between them are where the strategy is exposed.
