"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."
- Donald Rumsfeld, 12 February 2002.
I hate to find myself defending the man, but this makes total sense - and it is a very powerful tool for knowledge management.
Let''s break this down. There are only two variables:
- Known
- Unknown
These two variables can be combined in only four ways:
- Known Known
- Known Unknown
- Unknown Known
- Unknown Unknown
Consider the potential applications as they relate to the knowledge held by a single person about "Bronywn's birthday"
- Known known
"It's Bronwyn's birthday tomorrow"
- Known unknown
"When is Bronwyn's birthday again?"
- Unknown known
"Crap! I forgot Bronwyn's birthday!"
- Unknown unknown
Bronwyn is actually a cylon, and therefore does not have a birthday.
...that's one person, but the same can apply to an organisation where knowledge is distributed across multiple brains - such as, for example, James Bond's nemesis organisation SPECTRE:
- Known known
(Everyone in the organisation knows what's going on)
"Tomorrow we will hold the UN to ransom with our incredible Death Ray."
- Known unknown
(One+ person doesn't known something, but they know that someone else does know)
"I can't find the keys to the Death Ray. Who has the keys? Come on, one of you guys has the keys..."
- Unknown known
(One person knows something, another person doesn't, but they don't know there's a disconnect)
"The infra-dinfra-super-destructo setting isn't working, why isn't it working? Is it broken? I think it's broken." (It's not broken, the lead engineer turned it off on purpose because it was badly implemented and likely to explode/destroy the entire Headquarters.)
- Unknown unknown
Henchman #5 is actually James Bond. He has stolen the keys, invisibly set the infra-dinfra-super-desctructo setting to blow up in five minutes time, and is currently riding to freedom on the back of a robot dolphin.
Posts
A long, long time ago I went through the Landmark Forum. It's a weekend long "seminar" that borders on brainwashing - all designed to help you become a person of integrity. It's a bit misguided, but hits the mark in a lot of place.
ReplyDeleteIt had a segment on this very distinction Rumsfeld made. As with you, it made perfect sense to me when Rumsfeld said this. In fact, it resonated so much, I wonder if he went through the same forum at some point.
Oooooh Landmark. Yes, I've heard of them - founded by a guy who got kicked out of Scientology for being too extreme, if I remember correctly.
ReplyDeleteThat is very, very interesting. Added to the knowledge bank.