WHAT I DIDN’T KNOW I DIDN’T KNOW

As I approach the last chapters in my life’s book, I find myself sitting in boardrooms, staff rooms and locker rooms, listening to future leaders, athletes, managers and talented executives — and I can’t help but reflect on the wider context of it all.

Their confidence and optimism take me straight back to my younger days.

THE CONFIDENT YOUNG MAN

Unlike them, I was possessed by the blissful naivety of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

I remember one occasion vividly. A room full of NBL directors and franchise owners — people successful in their own right, far more so than I. Yet there I was from the West, so sure I was right that I spoke with confidence and infallibility, determined to convince them of a particular perspective.

And the uncomfortable part? The results seemed to vindicate me. We were winning. The stands were full, the Red Army (a mere creation, a figment of imagination) was alive roaring, and a club that once teetered on the edge was thriving. Nothing confirms your biases quite like winning. Success, I have since learned, is the most persuasive liar in the room.

Now, with decades of hindsight, I realise how unwise I was.

I just didn’t know it then.

THE KNOWN-KNOWNS

I was playing in that bottom-left quadrant of the now infamous Rumsfeld Matrix — the known-knowns. I was true to myself, of course, but limited by the extent of what I knew. It was an honest pursuit, but oh so narrow.

The irony is not lost on me. For years I recruited to three values — honesty, humility and hard-work. I could spot the absence of each of them in a recruiting interview from across the table or the basketball court.

I was considerably slower to spot its absence in the mirror!

THE KNOWN-UNKNOWNS

As the years went by, I realised the folly of my ways and moved — with the reality of life’s heat-checks — towards a greater awareness of my ignorance. There were so many things I did not know.

These days, as I consult to teams and direct organisations, I am acutely conscious that what I believe to be true — after numerous trials and tribulations — may still be a very narrow comprehension of it all. The known-unknowns.

There is a manuscript on my desk that proves the point. The chapters I understood — communication, candour, trust, vulnerability, commitment and accountability — wrote themselves. But completing the story without the context of a higher purpose seems impossible.

That gap between awareness and understanding is precisely where I now spend my days.

My efforts are directed at learning the things I am aware of but don’t quite understand, so that I am better prepared to serve. It requires hard work, but with every step forward, momentum fuels motivation.

THE UNKNOWN-UNKNOWNS

And not just in work — in leadership and management — but of late in spiritual and mental understanding.

I’ve always held that things must make sense for me to believe. For me to have faith. If they don’t make sense, I shall not.

Creation, the Creator, the belief in God — all of these must follow logic and science, and be proven beyond doubt.

Yet on most Monday mornings, as dawn breaks, I walk the perimeter of a suburban stadium with others in prayer. The same kind of building I once measured in attendance figures, revenues, earnings and wins . The younger me would not have understood that. He measured everything.

So I ask myself: what if, as in my younger days, my over-reliance on my own cognition — my assuredness in the known-knowns — proves to be my greatest failing?

What if truth is not subjective but objective?

What if the unknown-unknowns require faith without facts, trust without full understanding?

What if even the wisest among us is limited in awareness about God — let alone me?

Just because we are unable to know or understand God, does that mean he does not exist.

I hope my own desire for self-reliance, and my need for facts and understanding, does not keep me from the true joy of hope in something much higher — for restlessness is all that remains until we find it.