#50: Do we know what we don’t know?

At a news briefing in 2002, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld attempted to explain the limitations of intelligence reports:

“There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

Now that’s a tongue twister of a sentence that over the years has been the focus of much philosophical debate – I’ve seen one article that ran to 2,440 words of scholarly explanation!

As a pragmatic CEO, we might simply want to ask ourselves …

What should we know?

Routinely asking that question IN EVERY AREA OF OUR BUSINESS will uncover some of those unknown unknowns.

Discovering these unknowns and turning them into known intelligence can sharpen decision-making and help develop business transforming competitive advantage.

You could start by picking one aspect of your business and run a brainstorming session to come up with things you should know.

Your existing customers for example – what SHOULD you know about them?

You might decide that you should know how often your existing customers are approached by your competitors.

Or you should know what your customers think great customer service is.

Maybe you should know if your customers aspire to use one of your competitors.

Answering the ‘what should we know’ question could deliver the breakthrough you’ve been looking for.