Do we know what we don’t know?

It was a while ago, in fact, the morning after the Boston Celtics lost to the New York Knicks in the playoffs. I was in the locker room after swimming my mile, and the conversation was very animated. I was surrounded by “experts.”

They all knew exactly what the Celtics should have done or not done. I didn’t say anything, but I wondered why these experts weren’t on the Celtics coaching team. They could probably make a lot more than they do in their current jobs.

During football season, it’s even worse.

I wonder how Bob Kraft and Mike Vrabel can get along without all this guidance. And of course, the Red Sox are desperately in need of their advice as well.

Perhaps many locker rooms are filled with such guidance.

I’m a consultant. None of my clients want to pay me to learn their processes and technologies. When I’m trying to solve their problems, I have to depend on what I call local knowledge. I collect relevant information, put the pieces together and connect the dots to help everyone see what’s going on.

The hardest part of that is finding the people who actually know what’s going on. A lot of people think they know and volunteer the information, but most of them haven’t got a clue. They’re not intentionally lying, but if they really knew what was going on, they wouldn’t be hiring a consultant to figure it out for them.

Interestingly, the relatively few people who have clues rarely volunteer their information. They’re afraid, too; they have probably complained about their problems in the past and been told they didn’t know what they were talking about. Nobody wants to be made to feel stupid, especially not repeatedly.

So, once I track them down, I have to assure them they won’t get into trouble answering my questions. I even offer to keep them anonymous if they wish.

It’s unusual to find someone with the whole answer; people in different areas may each have a piece of a clue, and if we can link them together correctly, we have the real story. Developing a solution is the next step. It’s usually something management doesn’t like, so I have to find a way to sell it to them.

The point of all this is there seems to be a malaise in our culture in that we don’t know what we don’t know. I once had a girlfriend who was startled when she heard me say “I didn’t know” to a question she had asked. She claimed she had never heard her father or her brothers say those words. I told her I say them a lot.

Admittedly, we all like to think we know what’s going on, but that inhibits us from ever learning the reality in far too many cases. The consequences in failed or failing businesses are obvious. I don’t think anybody goes out of business on purpose. But doing what we think is right is not going to work if it isn’t really right.

As I write this, Israel and Iran are at war.

I’ve been to the Middle East on business, and I consulted with both Israeli and Palestinian companies, and I got to hear both sides. History was one of my favorite subjects, so I know a fair amount about their backgrounds. No one can be successful as a consultant without earning the client’s trust. Once you’ve earned it, they often speak freely on a wide variety of subjects.

I can tell you the business leaders want no part of all this fighting. They realize they’re simply destroying each other’s standard of living. “You kill my kids, and I’ll kill yours. Blow my house up, and I’ll destroy yours, too.”

This enmity goes back thousands of years, and I don’t know how we can fix it. What truly amazes me is people, who know none of the history and have never been there, claim to know exactly what we should do or not do. I hope and pray the people in charge have the right information and can make the right decisions.

The sports enthusiasts in the locker rooms aren’t doing any real damage if their advice is bogus. Making the wrong business decisions can be far more consequential, but a mistake in the Middle East could cause a war far more destructive than anything we’ve ever seen before.

Maybe we should all form the habit of saying “I don’t know” when we don’t and learn to find the real answers.