TEAPOTS AND UNKNOWNS
When you look back over the many injustices of high school, it’s often the little stuff that matters the most. Mine was in a math class over a teapot.
It came back to me today, when thinking about the stuff we know and the stuff we don’t – and how recognising the difference can help us make things clearer. I mean who, in the universe, ever, takes the time to warm a teapot? Stuff you, Mrs Turner.
Known, unknown and some Welsh words
Knowledge is the foundation of understanding. Stuff we know seems obvious. Stuff we don’t know isn’t on our radar, so it doesn’t matter… until it does.
And that’s when things get complicated.
Some smart guys from IBM (one of them Welsh) explored this idea and decided there are different states of knowledge: Known knowns, known unknowns, unknown unknowns and WTF. (I paraphrase) They caught it in a ‘sense making framework’ called the Cynefin Framework. It looks a bit like this:
The basic idea is that the more you know, the easier things are. Which makes sense. But it also throws a spanner in the works in jobs where you make stuff up.
Creative jobs, like advertising and marketing are full of people who make stuff up for money. It’s our job to innovate and imagine – driving at pace into the land of the unknown. That’s why it can feel like chaos.
So how do we wrangle the unknown?
Our first task it to make friends with it. In creative jobs there’s often more stuff we don’t know than stuff we do. So we have to be okay with that. Then we use people, process and really good questions to make the unknown known. It looks a bit like this:
People with more experience usually know more than people with less. So they can help identify the stuff you don’t know you don’t know and point you in the right direction.
Problem is, people with more experience are often busier than people with less. So asking for help on everything is challenging both sides. That’s why we have process.
Process, like regular stand ups, big room planning sessions and various quality assurance (QA) moments are other ways to recognise dodgy assumptions and bring clarity to stuff we didn’t know. That’s why these collaboration moments are so valuable.
Once we know what we don’t know, it’s easy to find out. We can make guesses based on the stuff we do know and evolve these into more accurate estimates with great questions.
Making sense of the chaos
The Cynefin Framework was developed as a ‘sense-making framework’. Its value is in helping us recognise the difference between things we know we don’t know and the stuff where we don’t have a Scooby.
In the old days of waterfall checks and balances, these confusions and unknowns were teased out over time. Today, with the process and pace of agile, they can sneak up and shove us from clarity to chaos at all kinds of inconvenient times.
The secret of success being comfortable knowing there’s stuff you don’t know, open to feedback and brave enough to go with your gut and have a go.
What’s this got to do with teapots?
Here’s the thing. As a proud nerd I was into math. I loved the simplicity of getting ticks for the right answers and knowing they were true. Then one lesson we talked about decision trees and flow charts. Our assignment was to make a flow chart on making a cup of tea. I nailed it… And failed it.
According to Mrs Turner, warming the teapot is step number two. Now that’s something I’d never even thought of. Something I didn’t know I didn’t know. Everything else was bang on brief and she failed me anyway. I’d love to say I’m over it. But I’m not.
And that’s the key point. If there’s something you don’t know you don’t know you can’t be blamed for not knowing it. Next time you will – that’s how we build experience. Resilience helps us bounce as we learn. As for me, I’m never having tea with Mrs Turner.
That’s what I reckon, what do you think?