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1 minute read
Let me tell you a story about one of the greatest business ideas an Englishman taught me 20 years ago.
It started like this; “Well Neil I assume…”
Neil stopped me in my tracks, looked me straight in the eye and he said…
“Brenden, Never, Ever, ‘ASSUME’! When you Assume you make an ‘ASS’ out of ‘U ‘and ‘ME’”
Neil was DEAD serious, extremely firm and wanted to teach me a valuable lesson…Neil and I worked closely together in the production of personalised direct marketing campaigns, where a single assumption can truly devastate the work of many.
Neil took responsibility for the accuracy of his client’s work, was proud of his professional reputation and was certainly not prepared to mess that up by allowing me to make lazy assumptions and ultimately mistakes!
I’ll never forget this lesson, when we make assumptions, we take a gamble, our gamble can impact our client, our team, can cost time, money, and reputation.
I’m curious to know your thoughts, have you been burnt by assumption, how did you learn, how do you teach others?