Jennifer stood back from her cloud and looked at it properly for the first time.
The diagram was complete. Upper branch, lower branch, the two positions at the bottom that could not coexist. The UDEs mapped across direct, secondary and systemic layers. The cost of the conflict visible across all three Cs.
And she still felt stuck.
"I can see everything," she said. "And I still can't see a way through."
That is exactly where this chapter begins. The cloud has shown you the truth of the situation. It has not yet shown you where the leverage is. This chapter finds it.
The arrows are not facts
Here is the move that changes everything.
The arrows in your cloud are not facts. They are assumptions.
Each arrow is a belief about necessity:
- A → B: "I must have these benefits to achieve my outcome."
- A → C: "I must also have these benefits to achieve my outcome."
- B → D: "I must be in D to secure B."
- C → D': "I must be in D' to secure C."
- D ↔ D': "These two states cannot both be held at once."
Every one of these arrows feels, in the moment, like an iron law. That is why the cloud has held for so long. It is not that you have been weak. It is that the logic has been invisible.
The moment you see the arrows as assumptions rather than facts, a different life becomes possible. The walls of the prison are made of beliefs, not bricks.
Three kinds of assumption
Not all assumptions are the same. In the Perry Approach, it helps to sort them into three categories. The category tells you what kind of work each assumption needs.
- Factual assumptions are claims about how the world works. "The budget cycle runs annually." "The customer requires a signed acceptance." These can be checked against evidence. Sometimes they hold and sometimes they do not.
- Belief assumptions are claims about what must be true for you to have what you need. "I must personally review this to know it's right." "If I don't catch the problem, no-one will." These are rarely tested. They usually formed long ago and became part of how you read the room.
- Value assumptions are claims about what is good, proper or required. "A professional checks everything." "Senior means accountable for every detail." These feel like identity more than belief, which is why they are the hardest to see.
The three categories matter because they do not respond to the same work. Factual assumptions can be updated with information. Belief assumptions need examination. Value assumptions need adaptive work — the kind we will come to in Chapter 11.
Surfacing the assumptions on each arrow
Take your cloud. Walk through each arrow in turn. For each one, ask: what must be true for this arrow to hold?
Work without editing. Some of what you surface will feel trivial. Some will feel uncomfortable. Both matter.
- On A→B and A→C. What must be true for these benefits to be genuinely necessary to the outcome? Are there ways of achieving A that do not require this particular benefit?
- On B→D. What must be true for the future state to be the route to B? Are there other routes you have not explored?
- On C→D'. What must be true for the current behaviour to be the route to the current benefits? What convictions are locked into this arrow?
- On D↔D'. What must be true for these two states to be genuinely incompatible? Is the incompatibility absolute, or is it an artefact of how the roles are currently arranged?
Aim for three to five assumptions per arrow. Note which category each one falls into — factual, belief, or value.
The arrow that usually carries the insight
When you have worked through all five arrows, one of them will tend to carry more weight than the others. In most persistent conflicts, it is the same arrow.
The C→D' arrow — the belief that your current behaviour is the only way to secure your current benefits — is usually where the breakthrough assumption lives.
This is not accidental. A cloud endures because both sides are genuinely needed. The thing that locks it in place is not the needs themselves — it is the conviction that your present behaviour is the only way to meet one of them.
When you examine this arrow honestly, it almost always buckles. It buckles not because you were wrong to rely on D', but because D' has become one route among several — and the others have not been built yet. That discovery is what this chapter is really for.
A secondary hunting ground is the A→C arrow — the belief that the current benefit is genuinely required to reach the outcome. Sometimes, under scrutiny, this arrow reveals that part of C has been protective rather than essential. That is a subtler insight, and it needs to be handled gently. When it appears, though, it changes the shape of the tactics we will build next.
The other three arrows — A→B, B→D, and D↔D' — usually hold up well under scrutiny. Where they do not, it is a signal that the cloud itself needs tightening before proceeding. That work belongs back in Chapter 8.
Why seeing is not enough — yet
You might expect that simply naming the assumptions would set you free. It rarely does.
If it were that simple, you would already have changed.
Those assumptions exist for good reasons. They were built from past experience, from genuine fears, from needs that once went unmet. They have protected something real. If we dismiss them, they will go underground and continue to run the conflict from there.
The method therefore asks something more careful. Meet each assumption with respect. Understand what it has been protecting. Then, in the chapters ahead, test whether the belief still fits the life you are trying to live now.
That adaptive work belongs to Chapter 11. Before we can do it well, we need something else first: practical alternatives to the current behaviour. Tactics that can be tested, refined, and sequenced. That is the work of the next chapter.
Practice: Surfacing your assumptions
Before you move on, take forty minutes with your cloud.
- Walk each arrow. For each of the five, write down three to five assumptions that must hold for the arrow to be true.
- Categorise each one as factual, belief, or value.
- Identify the arrow that feels tightest. Almost always it will be C→D'. Sometimes A→C. Trust the one that carries the most weight when you read it aloud.
- Note the value assumptions. These are the ones that feel like identity. They are the material the adaptive work in Chapter 11 will use.
- Resist the urge to solve. If your mind jumps to "I could just..." — make a note of the idea and return it to the cloud. The solution chapter is next, and it will be better for the waiting.
If you can, do this with a thinking partner. The value assumptions are easier to see when someone else is reading the cloud back to you.
Closing
Your cloud is now more than a map. It is a map with a marked leverage point.
You have surfaced the assumptions on each arrow. You have identified the one — almost always C→D' — where the conviction is tightest and the scrutiny least honest. You have separated the factual assumptions, which can be checked, from the belief assumptions, which need examination, from the value assumptions, which will need adaptive work.
You do not yet have a plan. That is deliberate. Tactics built before the assumption is named are usually sophisticated versions of the current pattern. Tactics built after are different in kind.
That is the work of the next chapter.
Practise This With Others — The Conflict Club
The Conflict Club is Level 1 of YourThinkingCoach pathway — weekly live sessions where you work a real conflict with fellow practitioners. The book gives you the method. The Club is where you learn to use it.
The Conflict Club is Level 1 of YourThinkingCoach pathway — the entry point for anyone who wants to make this methodology part of how they think, lead, and work with conflict.
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