Explicit Assumption: 10 Evidence-Based Coaching Practices

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Explicit Assumption, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Practices that may help

1. Separate facts from assumptions explicitly
   Sort what you actually know from what you’re assuming, in two visible columns.
   First-Principles Thinking, Made Usable
2. Surface and examine the assumptions you are making
   Name the assumptions filling the gap between the data you selected and the interpretation you reached.
   The Ladder of Inference
3. Make your constraints explicit before solving
   Write out every assumption and rule you are treating as fixed — most problem-solvers carry invisible constraints they never surface.
   Constraint Relaxation: Escaping the Walls You Built Yourself
4. Name the assumptions that must hold for the plan to work
   Every plan rests on assumptions — list them and ask how likely each one is.
   Margin of Safety
5. Substitute
   Ask: what component, material, person, process, or rule could be swapped for something different?
   SCAMPER: A Systematic Creativity Technique
6. Surface and test underlying assumptions
   Identify the implicit assumptions that your reasoning depends on and test whether they hold.
   Socratic Questioning
7. Set charitable interpretation as your cognitive default
   Deliberately adopt the assumption that people are probably doing their best given their constraints.
   Hanlon's Razor: Never Attribute to Malice What Stupidity Can Explain
8. Test the big assumption behind your immunity
   Design a small experiment to check whether the assumption keeping you stuck is actually true.
   Kegan’s Subject-Object Theory, Made Practical
9. Define exceptions in advance, in writing
   A bright line with a pre-written exception stays bright; an improvised exception breaks it.
   Bright-Line Rules: When "None" Beats "Some"
10. Generous Interpretation
    Generous interpretation means defaulting to the most charitable plausible explanation for what someone did — assuming circumstance or misunderstanding before assuming bad character. It’s hard because of the fundamental attribution error: we reliably explain others’ behavior by their character while excusing our own by our circumstances. That asymmetry is one of the better-documented findings in social psychology, and correcting for it defuses a large share of avoidable conflict.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• In my head the things I’m sure of and the things I’m just guessing at all run together as one blur, so I end up treating my assumptions like hard limits→
• My conclusion only makes sense because of a bunch of things I’m silently taking for granted about people and how the world works→
• I keep telling myself "it has to be this way" and "that’s just not an option," and I’ve never once stopped to write down those rules and ask whether the problem actually imposed them or whether I just assumed them.→
• My plan feels solid until I notice it quietly depends on a whole stack of things just going my way→
• I keep treating one piece of this as a given→

Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.