This training focuses on the assumptions senior leaders make about what is and is not possible within their organisation. Some of these assumptions have been shaped by past successes and have worked reliably for years. With the introduction of AI, however, the conditions that made them valid are changing, and decisions based on them may no longer hold.
Participants will learn to articulate their own assumptions clearly, test them against evidence and challenge them with both colleagues and AI. They will practise generating alternative scenarios instead of defending a single “right” approach and distinguish between challenges that can be addressed with another tool and those that require a change in decision-making itself.
- Recognise personal assumptions about what is possible within the organisation and identify conditions that may no longer apply.
- Learn a process for articulating, testing and replacing assumptions with alternative scenarios.
- Increase resilience to anchoring on the first proposal and to seeking confirmation rather than disconfirming evidence.
- Develop the ability to maintain direction while defining in advance the signals that would indicate a need to change course.
- Support practical application through a specific action plan based on a real decision.
Why a Recipe for Success Eventually Becomes Outdated
- How a proven approach can become a blind spot
- When is an established decision-making path the right choice, and when does it cause us to miss an opportunity?
- What has made us successful so far – and do the conditions that made it work still exist?
- Which of these assumptions do our people hear from us as well?
- “Six Decisions” – participants first develop their own approach to six decisions and then compare their thinking within the group
What We Take for Granted in Our Organisation
- When is something a feeling, a complaint or a testable assumption?
- Why does the first proposal on the table shape what gets discussed afterwards?
- Why do we tend to look for confirmation of our conclusions rather than evidence that challenges them?
- What happens when AI becomes the advisor – and how readily can it confirm both sides of an argument?
Testing Assumptions
- Why simply being asked to “be objective” does not work – and why a specific question about the opposite can
- Shared assumptions: why they are difficult to test in a conversation between two people who both hold them
- Working with AI as a challenger of our own position
- What to do with an assumption that cannot be tested with certainty today
Alternative Scenarios: What Would Have to Be True?
- When there is only one proposal on the table – how to bring two more into the discussion
- What would have to be true for something we currently consider impossible to become possible?
- How would a competitor without our history interpret the same situation?
- Where does exploring possibilities end and a decision about the organisation begin?
A Decision I Will Make Differently
- Technical vs. adaptive challenges: why some problems cannot be solved by adding another tool
- Signals for changing course: what would I need to see before reconsidering a decision?
- One decision or decision-making routine I will change – and what this change could affect
- What could derail the plan before it even starts?
- By when and based on what evidence will I know whether it is working?