On The Train (We assume too much, really), June 19, 2007

The realisation that we assume a lot of things in this world was made so powerful when I was reading a chapter from The Bankers To the Poor, an autobiography of Grameen Bank and it’s founder, today. Even as a so called expert one could be stuck in one’s paradigm that forms a base to a lot of our thinking. We think we know the obvious but in actual fact we assume the obvious. In the book Aid Organizations assumed that people in all situation and culture are poor because they are not educated and do not have any skill. Thus their intervention was providing skill trainings that really the poor do not need. A red flag flashed across my mind today during my discussion about certain system development. Despite our good intention and the understanding to put our stakeholders requirement first and foremost we still think and react from our perspective first. In this case we look at the system requirement from our own internal stakeholders perspective rather then external. I knew instantly we are going to have a problem. I am not sure how to get out of this ‘assuming’ box but one thing for sure I have to start to try to do it now.