Unspoken assumptions

Everything we do in life has a certain set of unspoken assumptions of the underlying ways things work. The language of business has been tied to things that are analytical, metric-, and control-oriented. We speak the language of management, policies, processes, techniques, and all the other terms we have invented to disguise the fact that what we are speaking of are people and their untapped potential. What are our unspoken assumptions about the true potential of people?