Have you ever heard of the Dunning–Kruger Effect? If the answer is heck no… then we’re all in the same boat. We’d never heard of it before this week when we listened to a beautiful episode of This American Life and nearly died of laughter.
So here it is. The Dunning-Kruger Effect is a fancy name for the situation we’ve probably all found ourselves in at some point in our lives. It’s where we or someone we know is completely lacking in knowledge about a certain subject, but is unfortunately, 100% oblivious to that lack of knowledge.
Now, I hope I’ve never been as clueless as the bank robber wearing who wore lemon juice that Ira Glass talks about in this podcast I just mentioned. But I’ve had my fair share of embarrassing Dunning-Kruger-esque moments in my lifetime.
The example that immediately popped into my mind was when I was 21 years old and studying in Thailand. My host-mother gifted me a sarong to wear to go work the night market with my host-father. She insisted that she help me tie it. And I refused. Cinching a piece of fabric to my waist didn’t seem that complicated. I knew exactly what I was doing. When the sarong dropped to my ankles in the middle of the market…I was definitely proved wrong.
All of this talk about ignorance this week led Greg and me to start thinking. What might we missing in our business? Are there some aspects of this newsletter, or our market stand, or our farm store that so obviously need tweaking, that we just can’t see?
The answer is probably, YES… which is why we need to ask you for a big favor. Can you take a few minutes and complete this little anonymous survey for us? It’ll be the reality check we need this week…
Your Farmers,
Jenney and Greg