“Our ability to achieve the results we truly desire is eroded by our feelings that:

  • Our beliefs are the truth.
  • The truth is obvious.
  • Our beliefs are based on real data.
  • The data we select are the real data.

[The] ‘ladder of inference’ [is] a common mental pathway of increasing abstraction, often leading to misguided beliefs.”

–Rick Ross, The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook (242, 243)

What are you inferring about your staff, colleagues, or clients?