The Most Dangerous Assumption Is the One Nobody Questions

There is an old story attributed to General George S. Patton during the Second World War.As the story goes, Patton was studying a map with around thirty senior officers while planning the movement of his forces.

The map showed a road junction that appeared useful to the operation.

Everyone had accepted it. Except for one corporal, often identified in versions of the story as Corporal Davis.

Before the war, the corporal had reportedly worked in road surveying. He knew the area and told Patton that the supposed junction did not really exist, at least not as a route suitable for military vehicles.

Had the army followed the map blindly, vehicles could have been delayed or stuck.

Thirty senior officers were in the room.

But it took a corporal to question the assumption. He raised his hand, spoke up and addressed the general directly. Perhaps he had less rank to protect. 

Perhaps he simply knew what he was talking about.

There is one important qualification.

I have not found a dependable historical source confirming every detail of this story, so I will not pretend it is sacred historical scripture.

Which rather conveniently proves the point of this article.

Test the information, even when it supports the argument you want to make.

What we do know is that Patton wrote:

“One does not plan and then try to make circumstances fit those plans. One tries to make plans fit the circumstances.” 

Military history repeatedly shows why this matters. 

Maps are representations of the ground, not the ground itself. Even good maps have had to be supplemented by observations from real people on the ground, engineers, scouts, local people and others who knew what was actually happening on the terrain. I learned this while serving in the logistics and transportation arm of my unit, back in my own military service days.

The same applies to a business brief.

A brief is not reality. It is somebody’s interpretation of reality.

It may contain assumptions about the customer, the market, the problem and the solution management has already decided that it wants.

Some assumptions may be correct. Some are not. It is vital to test ALL of them.

Some may even be someone's wishful thinking presented confidently in a respectable PowerPoint template.

Over the past two decades, I have encountered many order takers.

They received the brief.

They nod, then they execute exactly what was requested.

Nobody asks whether the information is accurate, more importantly, nobody wants to challenge the client or question the senior person in the room or risk being labelled “difficult.” This happens far more often than you think. 

Then the campaign fails.

The creative team gets blamed. The media gets blamed. The market gets blamed. Sometimes even the customers get blamed for refusing to behave according to the presentation.

But the real failure may have been prevented much earlier. Because nobody had checked whether the road junction existed.

This article is dedicated to Adam Chen, founder of Createc Agency in Shanghai, one of the mentors who shaped the way I think.

Adam repeated one lesson constantly:

“Dig deeper. Dig deeper. Dig deeper.”

Dig deeper into the customer insights.

Dig deeper into the customer behaviour.

Dig deeper into all the assumptions behind the brief.

That lesson stayed with me. 

It taught me to look beyond the obvious answer, search for real consumer insights and understand the situation properly before planning the campaign.

Testing assumptions does not mean arguing for entertainment.

It means asking:

What are we actually trying to achieve?

What evidence supports this?

What are we assuming about the customer?

Who has direct experience of the situation?

What happens if this information is wrong?

That is not insubordination. It is a professional responsibility.

Before committing money, people and time to another campaign or business initiative, make sure the map reflects the ground.

Because activity is not strategy.

And executing the wrong plan perfectly still produces the wrong result.

If your organization needs an independent view before committing more resources, we can help management test assumptions, clarify the real objective and identify what must be addressed first.

Click here to start a conversation with us.

Historical note: The precise details of the Corporal Davis anecdote could not be independently verified through the historical sources reviewed. It is therefore presented as a story attributed to Patton, not as a confirmed historical account. Patton’s planning principle is documented in his memoir, War as I Knew It.