We’ve seen it a million times. Every one of us has encountered a person who is allergic to “I don’t know…”. They are sure of themselves, without good cause, and perform breath-taking mental and linguistic gymnastics to avoid admitting they don’t know something. It’s maddening.
You get nothing from pretending to know, and you deny the opportunity of opening yourself up to all possibilities – and learning something new. We also attain the grand duty of find out what you actually feel about something.
Lassoing this particular idiosyncrasy back to the Oh Yeah prism – we love clients who know what they want. What we love less, are clients who have no idea, but don’t tell us. They think their role is to have the breakthrough idea, and that’s not the case. It’s always a partnership, and time spent thundering down the creative path with an idea that isn’t right is far from ideal.
When a client says, “I don’t know…”, we don’t throw up our hands and bemoan the work we have ahead of us – we celebrate it. Becuase it means we are completely aligned with the client.
“I don’t know…” is then followed by, “Neither do we right now, but let’s find out.”
It’s not your job to know everything, but it is your job to decide what to do. And oftentimes that means giving the answer from which all other answers spring – I don’t know.
Take a moment to celebrate I don’t know.
It’s where all the very best ideas started from.