Chauffeur knowledge is making its way into business
dictionaries following a story told by Charlie Munger during his talk about
what went wrong with Enron.
After winning the Nobel prize for Physics in 1918, Max
Planck went around Germany giving talks. His chauffeur heard the talk so many
times that he had it by heart, and so one time, he asked Max Planck if he could
give the address. Planck agreed, they changed places, and the lecture came off
famously. But then came the question time, with the very first question being
one that the chauffeur had no hope of answering. The chauffeur replied: ‘Never
would I have thought that someone from such an advanced city as Munich would
ask such an elementary question! I'll let my chauffeur answer it.'
If you are a decision maker in an extremely busy airline environment,
and are expected to think and act fast, to be persuasive but unable to commit
time and effort to understand the topics, the chances are that you can easily
slip outside of your circle of competence, the zone of chauffeur knowledge and
source of not so obvious causes of disruptions. This doesn't have to be as bad
as it may look like as long as we can recognise when we are outside the circle and are open for inputs from those with real knowledge.
Distinguishing between people with real and chauffeur
knowledge is difficult. Here are some hints:
