Tag Archives: Ignorance

How NOT to Lead!

The Best & Brightest?

As long as Trump is president, we will never—repeat, NEVER—deal with this pandemic intelligently. He is a micro-manager, which means he will not allow anyone other than himself to control how this virus is dealt with. Consequently, since he is an ignoramus who thinks he knows absolutely everything (“I, alone, can fix it.”) there’s no aspect of this battle that will be addressed with the knowledge and understanding (forget wisdom) needed to limit the damage Covid-19 will cause in the coming years.

I feel the need to repeat myself. As long as this highly unqualified, prime example of the Dunning-Kruger effect, is president of the United States, this pandemic will NOT be dealt with with any semblance of scientific rigor . . . at least not if the results contradict his painfully limited understanding of just about everything other than how to properly grift and enrich himself and his cronies.

Remember when he said “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” How does one pre-emptively declare victory? It’s one thing to suggest how things might go, but to declare how those very things went before they actually “went” is the height of folly or, better yet, the mark of a snake oil salesman.

As long as this man is POTUS, we’re well and truly fucked. This country is already a shell of its former self. He’s going to wreak a whole lot more havoc in the next seven or eight months (at least) and, if re-elected, we can probably kiss our nation good bye. I, for one, will be working diligently to support California’s exit. I don’t want to live in Gilead.


Saying “I Don’t Know” Will Set You Free

If you’ve ever been in sales, I’m willing to bet you know it’s never a good thing to pretend you know something you don’t. Unless you’re making an opportunistic, one-off sale and you don’t really care about any relationship with your customer, it’s far better to admit ignorance and pledge to get an answer ASAP. Frankly, I think it’s always the best tactic regardless of your relationship; it’s just plain ethical and, a bit ironically, smart.

Most people know when they’re being fed a load of crap and pretending to know something of which you are ignorant can open up so many cans of worms it’s hard to define all the consequences. One of the major ones, however, is never being believed no matter what you say. Not a good thing, whether in sales or elsewhere.

Anyway, this came up again for me today because of a tweet by @wallybock, who pointed me to an article in the New York Times’ Corner Office section. The post is entitled “What’s Wrong With Saying ‘I Don’t Know‘?” It’s a good interview of Rachel Ashwell, founder of Shabby Chic and, besides her admonition to not be afraid of admitting ignorance, there’s a wealth of good business (and life) advice in her words.


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