I often hear people say that you shouldn’t make assumptions. But I can’t see how I could function without them. For example, I’m assuming lots of things right now: that the roof will not fall in on me, that I shall live long enough to finish this blog (I wouldn’t even start if I didn’t assume this), that someone will actually read this blog and find it thought-provoking. And so on. Life is one assumption after another.

I have a number of assumptions that I find very useful – even when they aren’t true. I call them operating assumptions. Here are some examples:

The customer is always right. This assumption leads to much better decisions about how to treat customers, instead of assuming that they are always wrong, or even that they will be wrong on, say, 50 per cent of occasions.

It is better to err on the side of over-communication than under-communication. I know people can suffer from information overload, but most communication problems stem from too little communication rather than too much.

Personality clashes are always half a dozen of one and six of the other. I find it is much safer to assume this instead of blaming the other person. It helps me to think about my behaviour and to take responsibility for my half.

Teams have the potential to thrive more on the differences between people than the similarities. This reminds me that, even though managing diversity is tricky and often irksome, it is worth the struggle.

People are trustworthy until they prove otherwise. This operating assumption has sometimes let me down – but very rarely. It helps me to behave towards people as if they are to be trusted and, hey presto, most people respond by being more trustworthy than they might otherwise have been.

People learn all the time – even if it isn’t what I want them to learn. This reminds me that there is no such thing as a non-learner. Learning, like water running downhill, is unstoppable.

Lastly, the people who are there are the right people. This helps me to focus on the people who have turned up rather than fretting about all the people who haven’t. The same applies to my blogs. The people who read them are the right people – never mind the millions of people who don’t know what they are missing.