The Danger of the First Story: Why Leaders Need to See Without Assumption

The following is adapted from Seeing Clearly by Shawn Gaffney.

We don’t see the world as it is. We see the world as we’ve learned to see it.

Every leader carries a lens made up of a lifetime of assumptions, experiences, habits, and unexamined stories that quietly shape the way they see. Most of the time, those stories work. They help us move quickly. But eventually there comes a point when the results no longer match the intentions.

I remember one project where we had done everything right. The specifications aligned and the pricing made sense. We were so confident that we went golfing that Friday afternoon, assuming the call would confirm what we already believed. We lost. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t wait to get off the golf course. That was the first time I questioned how I was seeing things instead of what we had done.

Most leadership problems are not execution problems. They are perception problems.

The Trouble with the First Story

The first story is the one we trust too easily. It’s formed from instinct, emotion, and speed, which makes it the most dangerous. Assumptions disguise themselves as truth, and the more experienced a leader becomes, the more convincing those assumptions feel.

In the summer of 2007, we bought our first box truck: twenty-four feet, Cummins diesel, fifteen thousand pounds fully loaded. The question was whether we needed commercial certification to run it. Nobody knew, and we had a job that needed to move. So we rationalized. We kept circling the regulations until we arrived at the answer we wanted. I made the call because I needed it to be true.

On the way home from a job in Washington, DC, my team got pulled over on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Tom called me from the side of the road and delivered our argument to the trooper: “Sir, we would agree with you completely. But this is not a truck.” The trooper looked at the twenty-four-foot rig, then asked for a supervisor. That was me. He wasn’t convinced, but he let them go.

We still laugh about “the stunner.” But the truth is, it only worked on the trooper because we’d been using it on ourselves for weeks. Confusion sounds convincing when you want something to be true. The next week, we got the certification.

Seeing Without Assumption

This is the paradox of leadership maturity. The more you know, the more tempting it becomes to stop seeing. Experience becomes a shortcut. Confidence becomes a filter. Leaders don’t fail from lack of knowledge. They fail from overconfidence in their first impressions.

Seeing without assumption doesn’t mean abandoning intuition. It means holding your interpretations loosely long enough to see the full shape of truth. Ask what else might be true. Separate fact from interpretation. Look again before the story locks.

What limits us is often what we think we already understand.

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For more advice on recognizing hidden assumptions in leadership, you can find Seeing Clearly on Amazon.

Shawn Gaffney is the founder and CEO of INFINIUM Architectural Wall Systems, a national manufacturer recognized as one of northeast Ohio’s fastest-growing companies for thirteen consecutive years. After twenty years in corporate leadership, he founded INFINIUM in his garage in 2003 with a conviction that engineered systems should remain closely connected to the people who build them. Shawn’s work centers on clarity, culture, systems, and the discipline required to build organizations that scale without losing their identity. Seeing Clearly is his first book.