Tracey Follows explains how to flip your underlying assumptions to spot blind spots and imagine different futures. Write down what you believe is true, reverse it, then use AI to challenge your thinking and mind-map how competitors see the same problem.
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simple tool, which is you write down what you think the underlying assumption is to something, an idea, a concept, an action, a decision, an agreement, whatever. And then you just flip it, just flip the assumption that lies underneath and then see what the outcome of that is. And it's fascinating as it takes you into place that you probably had a blind spot about just because you're a little bit stuck and didn't realize that everything you were talking about or envisaging or imagining, but actually relied on an underlying assumption. And until you get to those, you start messing about with them, challenging them, turning them upside down and inside out, your blind spots continue. I think this is a very good example of one of the ways you can use AI really productively and creatively, which is to challenge it, you know, the where are my blind spots? If I was to reverse this assumption, I mean, it's better to do it in your head because you're training that muscle to attack your own thinking, if you like. But you can use it with AI, and if you haven't got much time and you're on a project or something like that, I'm always asking it, what are my blind spots? What have I missed here? But if I was somebody else in the market who thought exactly the opposite, where would that net out? Because this is great. This is all the mind mapping you can do and starting to realize where your competitors would end up because they've got a different underlying assumption. All those sorts of things we're supposed to do as strategists, but sometimes forget to do because, you know, you're on a project and there's
