Lesson 5 — The Hypothesis Problem: We're Never Selling the Answer¶
"We are selling a hypothesis, we are selling a hypothetical cure to what we think is wrong from a distance."
— David Russell
Lessons 1–4 covered the world you operate in and the habits that keep it running. This lesson and the next go one layer deeper: into how we actually sell and diagnose, and why the gap between what a client tells us and what is actually wrong is almost always wider than anyone expects.
1. We Never Actually Know the Answer Up Front¶
Every engagement Cortado sells begins with incomplete information. The client has a pain. The seller hears about it, forms a view, and proposes a solution. That proposal is not a diagnosis — it is an educated guess.
This is not a flaw in how we work. It is the nature of consulting. The client does not know what is truly wrong with their organization. The seller cannot fully know from the outside. So we make a hypothesis, get in the door, and then find out what is actually going on.
Understanding this changes how you think about your job as a Project Coordinator. You are not executing a guaranteed solution. You are executing a test of a hypothesis. The project plan is not a recipe — it is a structured attempt to prove or disprove what we thought was true before we had real access.
2. Sellers Sell What They Know¶
At Cortado, different sellers bring different diagnostic lenses. Each partner has a set of solutions they are comfortable prescribing — because they understand those solutions, trust the outcomes, and can see where they apply.
"Kyle, as a very conspicuous example, routinely sells Mystery Shop. No one else sells Mystery Shop at all. No one. He loves doing it and he knows what it reveals, and he recognizes that in the right hands, this is a fantastic diagnostic process. He trusts himself to do it."
— David Russell
This is not a criticism of any individual seller. It is how expertise works. A doctor who is comfortable with a certain treatment tends to prescribe it. The problem is that different sellers can look at the exact same client situation and come back with different proposed solutions — sometimes calling the same thing by different names.
What this means for a Project Coordinator:
When you join a project under a particular seller, you are inheriting their hypothesis about what the client needs. That hypothesis shapes what was promised in the Statement of Work, what the client thinks they are getting, and what the consultants were told to build. If you move between projects under different sellers, the deliverables may look different even when the underlying client problem is similar.
The SKU Resolution
Cortado has largely addressed this by standardizing our services into defined SKUs — named, scoped deliverables that mean the same thing regardless of who sold them. Ripples from the older, seller-specific era still exist in some engagements, but this is exactly why the SKU effort matters: consistent naming creates consistent expectations.
3. Everybody Lies¶
Even when the seller diagnoses correctly and the client agrees to the proposed solution, there is a deeper problem: the client will not tell you everything you need to know.
David frames this with a reference to the TV show House — a medical drama where a diagnostician solves impossible cases. The show's operating premise: everybody lies.
"Every single time you talk to anybody about the problem they come in for, they will not tell you the truth. So it's basically a doctor's crime show — a detective show. How do we figure out the truth so that we can fix you? Because you told me you have this problem... The reality is you cheated on your wife 35 years ago when you went on shore leave and got syphilis... But you didn't tell us because you didn't want to let the dirty secret out."
— David Russell
The point is not that clients are malicious. The point is that organizations — like people — present symptoms, not root causes. And the gap between what they tell you and what is actually true can be enormous.
4. Why Clients Don't Tell You the Truth¶
There are four reasons, and they are rarely malicious:
| Reason | What It Looks Like | Example from David |
|---|---|---|
| Incompetence | They genuinely don't realize the thing they did is relevant | "Did you do anything interesting?" / "No... except for that new hard drive you installed." / They didn't think to mention it. |
| Ignorance | They don't know what they don't know | The house is on fire and they can't imagine the cigarette they fell asleep with is relevant |
| Embarrassment | They know it's relevant but it reflects badly on them | Won't admit the real cause because it implicates their own decision-making |
| Self-protection | They know exactly what the problem is but telling you hurts them | "If I tell you it was my negligence, I don't get my insurance money — so I don't tell you" |
"Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence."
— David Russell
Most of the time the client is not deliberately withholding. They are confused, embarrassed, or simply unaware that the thing they are not mentioning is the thing that matters. The rare case of deliberate self-protection is genuinely hard — and it is exactly why discovery, covered in Lesson 6, is built into every single engagement.
5. The Hypothesis in Practice¶
End to end, the cycle looks like this:
- Client presents a symptom: "Our sales numbers are down."
- Seller applies their diagnostic lens: "You need sales training."
- We propose and sell a hypothesis: "We will train your sales team."
- We get in the door and run discovery.
- We find out the actual problem: "Your compensation structure is incentivizing reps to sandbag deals."
Steps 1 through 3 happen before we have any real data. Steps 4 and 5 are where we find out if we guessed correctly.
There is one more wrinkle. Even when we find the real problem, the client may not want to hear it:
"I told you what was wrong. Why are you telling me what I already know? I am brilliant. I've been doing this for decades. I'm telling you, I need the deep colonic. I don't give a shit what else you think might be the problem."
— David Russell
Some clients are so committed to their initial diagnosis that they refuse to accept a different one. In those cases, we often execute what they asked for — and use that access to build trust so they will eventually let us fix the real thing.
"We use their interest in the solution to get in the door, hoping that once we are trusted, they will let us actually heal them."
— David Russell
As a Project Coordinator, you are the person who sees the gap between the original hypothesis and what discovery is finding — in real time. Your job is not to resolve that gap on your own. Your job is to make sure the right people know it is happening so that someone does.
Knowledge Check¶
Scenario
You are coordinating a project that was sold as "sales team training." Two weeks into discovery, the consulting team tells you they are finding strong evidence that the actual problem is the client's pricing model — not the sales team's skills at all.
- Why is this finding not a surprise, given what you now know about the hypothesis problem?
- As a Project Coordinator, you are not the one who decides whether to pivot the engagement. What specific action should you take, and who should you bring it to?
Discussion guide
1. Why this finding is not a surprise: We were always selling a hypothesis. The seller diagnosed "sales training" from the outside with incomplete information, using their own lens, without access to real data. Clients also routinely do not tell us the full truth — the pricing problem may have been understood internally but never surfaced, or never recognized as the root cause (incompetence, ignorance, embarrassment, or self-protection all apply). The gap between the presented symptom and the actual problem is the norm in this work, not the exception.
2. What specific action to take: Document the finding in Asana or meeting notes the same day — not in the next weekly status deck. Bring it to the account lead and PM immediately with a clear note: "Discovery is showing the root issue may be pricing, not sales skills. Current SOW covers training only. Need guidance on whether to continue as scoped, flag this to the client, or propose a scope revision." Do not let the consulting team quietly pivot their work without explicit direction. Your job is to ensure the right people know the gap exists — not to resolve it yourself, and not to absorb it silently.
Continue to Lesson 6 — Discovery, Insights, and Account Development