The End of Knowing

After 30 years of being a mostly functioning adult with a fairly successful life—familial-wise, professionally, artistically, et al.—I have decided that I have reached what I will call the end of knowing. Don’t misunderstand me. Knowledge is a wonderful thing. Aside from love and art, it is perhaps the most worthwhile and satisfying pursuit. And continue pursuit it, I will. But the assertion of knowing something for certain? That’s folly… a trap of getting older, and the root of many evils and business failures around us.?

The stubborn insistence that we know something creates pain, wastes energy and time, and most importantly makes one unavailable intellectually and emotionally to consider the merits of other perspectives. When you?know?something and you’re sure of it, is there really any convincing you otherwise? I think the past several years and the havoc unleashed on our communities, families, and psyches clearly demonstrate otherwise.

You see, I come from a long, long line of people whose confident and unwavering knowing has caused unending heartache, oppression, suffering, and death the world over across time: straight white men in western civilization. “Manifest Destiny” is a really clear example: a phrase coined in 1845, encapsulating the idea that the United States is destined—by God, its advocates believed—to expand its dominion and spread democracy and capitalism across the entire North American continent.?

This determination is also at the heart of the Supreme Court’s unilateral upending of Roe vs. Wade, banning books in school libraries, gutting voting rights, shirking COVID-19 measures at the peril of hundreds of thousands of lives in this country alone, etc. To know so steadfastly and so unwaveringly—stubbornly—is to say to the other 7.753?billion people on our planet (or at least to those in the room) that the “truth” we each believe outweighs the facts of our shared reality… or at least that it carries more weight. And that’s plainly silly.?

You might be asking yourself, but what about?knowing?the opposite of the examples above: women deserve the right to choose, children deserve access to many perspectives in literature, that science is—in total—right and to be heeded. Shouldn’t reasonable and decent people?know?these things??

I don’t think so.

My assertion is that the better part of valor is to strive to understand, and to pay attention to what the facts are telling us, but knowing suggests an immovable finality. And that is what I am abandoning.?

I used to?know?that—given the chance and all things being equal—people were essentially good and would choose the right thing, given the chance. I once knew that my extended family and friends and business colleagues were generally benevolent??and interested in the greater good. But then, of course, what I knew to be true was shown to be otherwise. My mistake was being so certain.

In the end of knowing, I am finding not a bitter perspective but rather a kind of peace. To know is to prepare for endless tests of faith or debates. Whereas to be attentive and open is to simply be still and curious.

Of course, certainty is a perilous thing in business especially. We’ve all seen endless examples of co-workers and notable executives in news stories who were so sure of their workforce’s needs, their company’s capacity, their customer’s wants, their brand’s integrity, their reputation’s unassailable merit, their process’ efficiency… that they missed the crisis right in front of their faces. It happens every day. People wake up, they go to work, they know what they know and everything else is nonsense, and then things start to unravel and they, as well as all of their assumptions about how things are supposed to go, come undone. Then everyone around them loses—time, respect, progress, et al.

You see the opposite in the very best leaders—at any level of an organization. Conventional leaders know things. Great ones do not know, but instead they wonder and they question and they are open to suggestion and possibility. This is why young talent is so invigorating (and threatening). Those who have been around a few decades have seen trends come and go with the battle scars to show for it. And while part of our value is institutional memory and maturity, we assert our worth so often through?knowing. No, Caitlyn, you don’t have to go waste three weeks on that idea because I know already it won’t work. Pats self on back.

But of course, that’s stupid. What we are so convinced of may well have once been generally correct, but may not be any longer. Forty hours a week at a desk made sense if your business is looking over people’s shoulder and that’s the only way. But if you furrow your brow and dismiss ideas because?you know… then you and your company miss out on transformational ways of doing things. Sure, you might make some additional missteps, but you also rob your team and clients the opportunity to learn from the act of figuring things out together.?

The the perils of knowing are not only confined to foolish, selfish impulses. 25 years ago, the establishment thought it knew what diversity meant. The meaning of the word was discussed and vaguely understood. But look at what we have learned since. Diversity isn’t just having some not-white, not male people on the board or on the staff page—or having the word in our values statement. But that’s what people in power knew then. And imagine what (and who) we would have missed out on had we stuck with that knowledge. Shudder to think.

The end of knowing, for me, is a natural urge and a decision long coming. I have always been suspicious of cliches and popular points of view. To me, having age equal rightness or going the way most people go says you are not paying attention and rather, going along to get along. I like getting along well enough, but not so much that I am willing to shrug when asked what I think is right. The further I get into my life and career, the most I feel the expectation that I know. And I understand the allure. Knowing sounds nice enough, until you really stop and contemplate the perils of knowing something that can be true for you but not true for someone on either side of you.?

Next time you find yourself feeling the urge to raise your hand and say “I KNOW”, instead say, “I am not certain, but let’s find out together”.?

This is my 100th article here on LinkedIn, which is funny because I am sure many of them profess knowing this or that. Live and learn!