Innovation starts with the assumptions you’ve stopped noticing.

What is FLIP?

Created by management consultant Dennis Geelen, the FLIP Method is a four-step thinking framework designed to help leaders and teams uncover the hidden assumptions shaping how they operate. Rather than beginning with “What new ideas can we brainstorm?”, FLIP starts one level deeper: “What are we assuming is true?” It then helps a team examine the evidence behind that assumption, deliberately reverse it, and test the most promising alternative in a low-risk way.

Why is it needed?

Experience creates expertise, but expertise can also create blind spots. Practices that once worked gradually become accepted rules about customers, employees, competitors, processes and what is possible. Some remain valid. Others may be outdated, untested or simply inherited. When those assumptions stay invisible, they quietly define the boundaries of every solution a team considers.

• Brainstorming can create more ideas without challenging the boundaries around those ideas.

• Familiar assumptions can begin to feel like facts — especially when an industry has operated the same way for years.

• Teams can become very good at optimizing an existing model while overlooking a fundamentally different possibility.

• FLIP creates a repeatable process for questioning assumptions without turning every decision into an abstract debate.

• Small experiments let teams learn before making expensive, disruptive or irreversible commitments.

Where FLIP can be used?

FLIP is intentionally simple enough to use in a leadership conversation, team meeting, strategy session or facilitated workshop — anywhere “the way we’ve always done it” may be limiting what a team can see.

Innovation & growth - Discover new offers, markets, business models and ways of creating value.

Customer experience - Challenge assumptions about what customers want, expect or are willing to do.

Operations - Reconsider inherited processes, policies, handoffs, constraints and measures.

Culture & leadership - Surface shared beliefs about decisions, behaviour and how work gets done.

People & talent - Question assumptions about roles, hiring, motivation, flexibility and performance.

Strategy - Stress-test the beliefs underneath plans before significant resources are committed.

How the FLIP Method works

FIND - What are we assuming?

Identify the beliefs, rules and “truths” shaping the current approach. Look for language such as “customers always…”, “we have to…”, “our industry never…”, or “that would never work.”

LOOK - What evidence says it’s true?

Separate what is known from what is believed. Examine what supports the assumption, when it was last tested, where it may not hold true, and what evidence might contradict it.

INVERT - What if the opposite were true?

Reverse the assumption deliberately. The purpose is not to claim the opposite is correct; inversion is a thinking device that exposes possibilities the original assumption made difficult to see.

PILOT What’s the smallest way we can test it?

Choose the most promising possibility and design a quick, inexpensive, low-risk experiment. Use the result to learn, refine, scale or discard the idea before making a larger commitment.

Questions that move the conversation

FIND

• What are we assuming must be true for our current approach to make sense?

• What does everyone in our industry seem to accept as a given?

• What do we believe our customers, employees or partners expect from us?

• What have we stopped questioning because “that’s just how it works”?

• What could never change — and why do we believe that?

LOOK

• What evidence actually supports this assumption?

• When was the last time we tested whether it is still true?

• Are we relying on data, experience, convention or someone else’s opinion?

• Where or when does this assumption not appear to be true?

• What evidence would cause us to change our minds?

INVERT

• What if the opposite of this assumption were true?

• If we were starting this business or process today, would we design it this way?

• What would an outsider with no knowledge of our industry try?

• What becomes possible when we temporarily remove this rule or constraint?

• How might a competitor deliberately do the exact opposite?

PILOT

• What is the smallest version of this idea we could test?

• How could we test it without disrupting the entire business?

• What would we need to learn before investing more time or money?

• What result would tell us to continue, change direction or stop?

• Who could we test this with first — one customer, one team, one location or one process?

How to use FLIP

FLIP can take five minutes or a full day.

You don't need to schedule a workshop every time you want to challenge an assumption. FLIP is designed to scale with the size of the question you're trying to answer.

Use it informally when an assumption surfaces in a conversation. Or use it intentionally to uncover and challenge the assumptions shaping an entire strategy, process or organization.

Here are 3 suggested applications of the FLIP method.

1. FLIP a single assumption

5–15 minutes | A meeting, conversation or decision

Someone says, "Our customers would never go for that."

Instead of accepting it, pause and FLIP it.

FIND: What's the assumption we're making?
LOOK: What evidence do we actually have?
INVERT: What if the opposite were true?
PILOT: Is there a small way we could test it?

You may discover the assumption is correct. That's useful too. The goal isn't to prove assumptions wrong. It's to stop treating untested beliefs as facts.

2. FLIP a challenge

60–90 minutes | A team or leadership session

Start with a specific challenge, opportunity or stubborn problem.

Surface the assumptions that may be shaping how your team sees it. Identify the few that are both important and uncertain, then take the most promising one through FLIP.

Examine the evidence. Invert the assumption. Explore what becomes possible. Finish by designing a small experiment that can generate real evidence.

The goal: leave with something worth testing, not just more ideas.

3. Run a FLIP workshop (great for strategic planning sessions)

Half-day or full-day | A larger challenge, strategy or opportunity

Use FLIP more systematically to uncover the assumptions shaping how your organization operates.

Start broadly. Generate assumptions about customers, competitors, processes, people, products, pricing, strategy or whatever is relevant to the challenge.

Then prioritize them.

Rather than trying to FLIP everything, focus on the assumptions that matter most — especially those that are important to the business but supported by uncertain or outdated evidence.

Take the strongest candidates through LOOK → INVERT → PILOT, individually or in teams, and turn the most promising possibilities into practical experiments.

The goal isn't to challenge every assumption. It's to find the ones worth challenging.

90 MINUTES

The FLIP Introduction

A fresh perspective for your team.

An engaging, hands-on introduction to challenging assumptions, with a practical exercise that gets people thinking differently about a real business issue.

Ideal for team meetings, leadership retreats, and lunch-and-learns.

HALF DAY

The FLIP Workshop

Go deeper into a real challenge.

A facilitated working session where your team identifies key assumptions, examines the evidence, explores alternative possibilities, and selects promising ideas to test.

Ideal for teams facing a persistent challenge or looking for new opportunities.

FULL DAY

The FLIP Deep Dive

Move from assumptions to experiments

A more comprehensive session to examine multiple assumptions, develop new approaches, prioritize opportunities, and build practical pilot plans your team can take forward.

Ideal for leadership teams and organizations ready to explore meaningful change.

ZERO IN CONSULTING

CONNECT WITH DENNIS GEELEN DIRECTLY

dennis@dennisgeelen.me

1 (705) 821-1201

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