Are risks always connected to assumptions?

When researching risk ontology, I encountered an existential doubt—a fundamental question about how we frame uncertainty and assumptions.

Companies plan for success, not for failure—that is why they need targets, premises, assumptions, and initiatives. Success does not typically occur naturally or spontaneously.

From my understanding of English, premises are explicit and firmly stated, whereas assumptions can be softer and implicit—that is, unstated or not clearly perceived. Interestingly, in Portuguese, we use only premissas, since assunção carries other, sometimes confusing, meanings. For simplicity’s sake, I will use assumptions exclusively.

Assumptions are subject to uncertainty. They serve as proxies for an objective, which is why “Assumptions Deployment” is a powerful drill in strategic planning.

Uncertainty affects assumptions in two fundamental ways:

1. Known variation—the normal or expected randomness inherent in a process.

2. Potential deviation—departures from what is considered normal or expected, whether positive or negative (what many would call risks).

   
   

I personally do not classify known variations as risks, but that is a matter of choice. Let’s remember: there is no universally accepted ontology in this discipline.

So, when planning or forecasting, we ultimately deal with three types of assumptions, ex-post, as they interact with uncertainty:

1. Assumptions subject to normal or expected variations.

2. Assumptions that may experience positive deviations.

3. Assumptions that may experience negative deviations.

   
   

Interestingly, whether we prepend risk or performance to assumption does not change its fundamental nature. This suggests that we could entirely avoid the R-word, if we wished—without any loss of meaning. Even in disaster management, assumptions play a role:

• “Presuming that the dam does not collapse...”

• “We made the decision based on the assumption that all pilots would be effectively trained in time.”

Where does this lead to? Assumption management inherently covers anything uncertain. This means that, at our core, we are assumption systems-thinkers. Am I going insane or what?

And what about targets? They are simply descriptions of what success looks like—and, interestingly, they help uncover more assumptions and keep us busy.