THE PLAN EVERYONE AGREED TO — THAT NOBODY ACTUALLY CHECKED
The kickoff meeting went well.
The timeline looked reasonable.
Everyone nodded.
Nobody pushed back.
The plan moved forward exactly as written.
Nobody had.
The whole plan had been quietly depending on three things everyone treated as true.
Nobody had written them down.
Nobody had checked them.
By then, fixing them was expensive.
LET’S FIX THAT IN 15 MINUTES.
STEP 1 — FIND WHAT WAS NEVER CONFIRMED
🔴🟡🟢 COPY THIS INTO CHATGPT OR YOUR AI TOOL:
Act as my project chief of staff.
Important: AI is finding things worth checking.
You decide whether the assumption is actually confirmed.
STEP 2 — SORT BY RISK
If no, you may be able to proceed.
If yes, It needs confirmation before real resources go toward it.
You don’t need to verify everything.
You need to find the assumptions that could actually hurt the plan.
STEP 3 — CONFIRM OR FLAG BEFORE KICKOFF
Get the risky assumptions confirmed.
If something genuinely cannot be confirmed in time, flag it openly.
Watch for this sentence:
“We’re assuming X, but it should be fine”
That’s not confirmation.
That’s an assumption wearing a confident shirt.
SEND IT
Share the confirmed or flagged list before kickoff, while there’s still time to change the plan.
Save it as:
Hidden Assumption Sweep v1
HOW DID IT GO?
WHAT YOU JUST DID
You separated what the plan actually knows from what the plan is quietly counting on.
That’s the difference between finding a problem before execution and discovering it four weeks in.
Not every plan has a hidden landmine. Sometimes everything you assumed really does hold up.
But you can’t know that until you actually check—instead of just hoping it’s fine.
Before you grab today’s download:
Tell us about your role and what you’re working on so we can build workflows that actually match the problems you’re dealing with.
Not every assumption deserves the same level of attention.
The dangerous ones aren’t always the wild guesses.
They’re often the reasonable-sounding things nobody thought needed checking.
Thursday, we’ll sort assumptions by risk and confirmation—so you know which ones can wait and which ones can’t.
TODAY’S DOWNLOAD:
Inside today’s Field Kit:
The full prompt sequence
Assumption-risk worksheet
Pre-kickoff confirmation checklist
