Rules and Guidelines
Want to participate in the discussions? Please read our Community Rules and Guidelines. Need some help? Visit Support and Answers.

  • State Not Answered
  • Locked Locked
  • Replies 7 replies
  • Subscribers 17 subscribers
  • Views 691 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
You may also be interested in
This discussion has been locked.
You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a question you can start a new discussion

Unknown Unknowns

Former Community Member
Former Community Member
As we approach our Christmas shutdown at work and start our major projects, my colleagues and I are often asked if there is anything we don't know that could go wrong .... so I thought I would share Donald Rumsfeld quote cool

7cf10eb0963ae342220079a6309759e5-huge-unknown.png

  • 0
    That quote is often ridiculed, but it makes perfect sense if you take the time to think through it.  You can make contingency plans in case of the known unknowns, but it's the unknown unknowns that can really trip you up.
  • 0
    The reduction of the unknown unknowns is what we are working towards


    Chris Chew
  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    We go to extraordinary lengths to reduce the unknown unknowns ......
  • 0
    Some organisations do, while some go to the other extreme and pretend that these don't exist and that they know what's going on - I always find it reassuring when I meet people who admit there are unknown unknowns!


    Cheers, Andy
  • 0
    Whilst Rumsfeld is given the credit, the quote is correctly attributable to Robert Buckman of Buckman Labs  (for example, see www.kmworld.com/Conference/Speakers/Robert-Buckman.aspx), who first coined the term around May 2000. He presented at the same conference as that other guru of knowledge management, Dave Snowden.

    ​Rumsfeld was simply intelligent enough to recognise something that is "simply brilliant".


  • 0
    William Shakespeare?

    There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

    Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.




    - Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio


  • 0

    This study develops and suggests a model to characterize risks, especially unidentified ones.




    Kim, S. D. (2012). Characterizing unknown unknowns. Paper presented at PMIRegistered Global Congress 2012—North America, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.




    I think it was Confucious who said, circa 500 BCE:




    Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.



Community Rules & Guidelines