Grant McCracken has a great line in a recent post on marketing--he's advising Ford execs that if they really want to understand this new muscle-car trend to eschew "cool-hunters," put on their most conservative suits, and get out into the streets to talk directly to drag-racing kids. "You'll be met with ridicule," Grant says. "This is good." He continues:
Ethnography begins with an act of humility and the declaration of ignorance. The respondent will mock you at first and then something remarkable happens. When they see that you are not going to cut and run, that you are so sincere about finding out about what they know, you are prepared to endure a massive loss of face to do so, they will take you in, sit you down, and tell you all about it.
I think this applies not just to marketers, but to all of us who work as consultants and symbolic analysts of one sort or another. They (whoever "they" are) pay us to know more than they do, and so there's this tremendous pressure to appear as smart as possible at all possible times. The problem with this framework is that you have to ask the right questions to get the right answers, and if you aren't willing to humble yourself and show your ignorance by asking those questions, even (especially) "dumb" ones, you'll fail to add value.
This is exactly what I learned to do as a cub reporter in my first job after college. If I tried to impress someone with how much research I'd done and how well I understood the topic under discussion, I wouldn't learn anything new from them (and I'd get nothing in the way of colorful quotes.) But once I wised up and started playing dumb, people were all too happy to open up and educate me. Stupidity: the shortest path to wisdom.
