Tag: ignorance

The Culture Flub

I got the text in the middle of the night.

Bro, I thought this was a joke.

The “joke” my friend was referring to was encapsulated in another alert on my phone. The Dallas Mavericks had traded away their superstar point guard Luka Doncic.

I sat up in bed and reread the alert. There had been no indication this was coming. But then again, there was no reason it couldn’t happen.

Yes, Doncic was one of the best basketball players in the world, in the prime of his career. But even those elite players had a price – usually another superstar and a boatload of draft picks.

But glancing over the alert a third time, I found no indication of such a return. Yes, there was another superstar coming back to Dallas – an older one with a lower ceiling. But the rest of the return was a role player and a solitary draft pick.

The value exchange seemed nowhere near even. For all intents and purposes, the Mavericks had given away a generational player.

Roughly 12 hours later, Mavericks General Manager Nico Harrison sat in front of reporters, attempting to explain the move he’d just made.

Harrison spoke about the team’s desire to win a championship, after having fallen short several months earlier. And he emphasized the importance of bringing in players who could add to the team’s culture.

It was quite the theory. But it was already clear that most Mavericks fans weren’t buying it.

Many had already spewed vitriol online. Others had staged a mock funeral for Doncic’s Dallas tenure – complete with a casket – on the plaza outside the team’s arena. A memorial shrine to the superstar had blossomed nearby.

One of the reporters highlighted this to Harrison, who replied that the fans would come around once the team won a championship.

And if they didn’t win one in the next few years?

Well, they’ll bury me then, Harrison replied.

He was wrong. They already had.

I’ve lived in the Dallas area for many years. And I still find myself amazed by the misconceptions the region contends with.

There are still the lingering stereotypes of Big Hair and Trophy Wives from the 1980s. There are still the Land of Steakhouses and Strip Clubs claims. And there are the reductive barbs about the region being filled with a sea of snobs in their Mercedes.

But the one that gets me riled up the most is the claim that Dallas is a winner’s town.

Now, this reductive claim holds true across most large southern cities. While all of America is captivated by success, there seems to be a more ruthless demand for it in the Sunbelt – particularly when it comes to professional sports. If a team struggles to win in Atlanta, Tampa, Miami, Houston, Phoenix, or Charlotte, there’s a good chance fans will stop packing the stands.

On the face of it, this can appear true in Dallas too. When the Texas Rangers and the Dallas Stars struggled in baseball and hockey, respectively, it wasn’t hard to spot empty seats around the ballpark or the arena.

But that hasn’t proved true at all for the Dallas Mavericks. For a generation, fans have packed the stands for each game. And they’ve proudly worn their replica basketball jerseys around town.

Some of this can be attributed to sustained success on the court. The Mavericks made the postseason in 20 of the first 25 seasons of this millennium, winning a championship in one of those seasons.

But the city’s lovefest with the Mavericks has more to do with two names – Dirk Nowitzki and Luka Doncic.

Each arrived in Texas from Europe to play basketball for the club — 20 years apart. And as each developed into a superstar on the court, they came of age off it — in the same community that filled the stands at the arena.

Nowitzki and Doncic only shared the court for one season. But that year felt like a passing of a torch.

Doncic saw how Dallas embraced Nowitzki wholeheartedly — how the city viewed him as a key strand of their fabric, rather than just a great basketball star. And he took strides to follow in those footsteps.

Indeed, Luka Doncic was core to the culture of Dallas. He was in rap songs and on billboards. He enthusiastically gave his time and energy to community service around town. He willingly mingled at local establishments with the masses who picked the stands at his games.

He was a man of the city. He was the city.

Until Harrison shipped him away in the dead of the night.

In the business world, there’s plenty of discussion about culture.

Maintaining a strong corporate culture is paramount. So is understanding the culture of consumers.

If either process is broken, a company will leak oil. Progress will be halted, and viability will become a concern.

Nico Harrison knows this well. He previously was an executive at Nike — a company lauded for harnessing both sides of the equation.

And yet, he somehow failed to follow those principles in Dallas.

Perhaps, yes, the Dallas Mavericks internal culture could be improved by a personnel shakeup. For all his greatness, Doncic did have deficiencies on defense. And he complained to the referees far too often.

But by ignoring the effects such a move would have on the associated consumer culture, Harrison failed. He failed himself, he failed the Mavericks, and he failed the city of Dallas.

And when Harrison inferred that local fans embrace championship rings more than the players who earn them, he made himself an eternal pariah.

All of this has far-reaching consequences.

There’s no doubt that the Mavericks’ brand has been degraded by this culture flub, and its connection to the city is in tatters. Harrison himself has unfortunately faced death threats, and the coffee shop where he started the clandestine trade talks has become terra non grata.

There are still chapters to be written, of course. Maybe the new players connect with the Dallas community and become part of its culture – all while delivering a title to the city. Maybe a new hope rises – Star Wars style – and becomes the next Nowitzki or Doncic.

But regardless of what transpires, a cloud will remain over the Mavericks organization.

The franchise got the city of Dallas wrong. They got the rules of culture wrong.

And that won’t ever be forgotten.

The Burden of Ignorance

In January of 1995, two men strode into some Pittsburgh-area banks and robbed them at gunpoint.

The robbers made off with roughly $10,000 in cash. But they weren’t exactly modern-day members of the Dillinger Gang.

Neither man concealed his face during the crime spree. Instead, each doused themselves in lemon juice – believing it to render them invisible.

They weren’t, of course.

Bank security cameras offered up clear images of the criminals in action. And they soon found themselves behind bars.

In the interrogation room, one of the robbers – McArthur Wheeler – offered up the following excuse to bemused detectives.

But I wore the lemon juice! I wore the lemon juice!

Wheeler’s explanation, absurd as it was, became Exhibit A for a newfound psychological phenomenon – The Dunning-Kruger Effect.

As I’ve written before, The Dunning-Kruger Effect proclaims that those who are the most confident in their performance are all too often overconfident.

It leads to people making idiotic decisions with delusions of genius. And those decisions – like covering oneself in lemon juice and robbing a bank – can turn into amusing stories.

But the collateral damage behind the headline? That’s no laughing matter.

When you’re dead, you do not know you are dead. It is only painful for others. The same applies when you are stupid.

Ricky Gervais uttered these lines as a joke. But he was onto something.

Wheeler and his accomplice were certainly stupid when they robbed those banks while doused in lemon juice. And they got what they had coming to them – namely, years in prison.

But the collateral damage was not so neat and tidy.

Anyone in those banks that day likely felt traumatized by the brazen robberies. Anyone outside of the banks felt obligated to look around for the suspects, after their faces popped up on a Crimestoppers poster. And ultimately, the criminal justice system felt strained by the plea deals and sentences the incident required.

This is the burden of ignorance. When it bursts into the open, blind stupidity can cause an unwieldy mess. And others are saddled with the mop and bucket.

This pattern can be insidious.

The accused might grasp that they’ve done something wrong. But if they’re too ignorant to understand why their actions sparked catastrophe, they stand little chance of making better decisions moving forward.

They’ll keep stepping in it, again and again. After all, it’s hard to avoid what you don’t understand.

All the while, those affected by these transgressions seethe in their discontent. They ostracize the ignorant to put distance between themselves and the next disaster.

Fissures grow through this process. Polarization and resentment fester.

And we find ourselves on a road to nowhere.

Intelligence is a gift. But it’s also a skill.

I know this as well as anyone.

Growing up, I knew I was a smart kid. I got good grades in school. I easily recited statistics from memory. I read books in my spare time.

Yet, I was ignorant about using my gift. I struggled with social nuances and with other everyday activities.

It was only through experience that I was able to hone my intelligence. To apply it to life’s intricacies. And to thrive.

This journey took years to crystallize. But once it did, it spurred my ethos.

Be present. Be informed. Be better.

I’ve committed to following these three principles for quite some time. But I realize they contain a massive blind spot.

These principles, you see, say little about how to deal with others. Particularly those who might unwittingly throw a banana peel in my path.

My instinct has long been to wall them off. To protect myself from bearing the burden of ignorance whenever possible.

But such a strategy does me little good. It leads me to elevate myself over the ignorant, and to judge them with disdain. All while remaining at risk of their shenanigans.

My circle gets smaller through this process. And as exclusivity grows, so does disassociation.

Eventually, I’m the one who’s ignorant. Not for a lack of intelligence, but for a lack of real-world context.

It would be far better for me to extend an olive branch to those I seek to avoid. To teach, to coach, to mentor. To lead both with the context of example and with a vocalized compassion.

Such actions would provide the misguided the same opportunity once afforded to me. An opportunity to grow beyond naivete, and to avoid disastrous missteps.

There’s no guarantee that everyone would see the light. But if I keep the door closed, no one will.

So, I’m pledging to do better going forward. But such a commitment can only go so far.

Don’t bring me problems. Bring me solutions.

Some version of this phrase has been uttered by just about every executive in the history of business.

The implication is simple – airing problems without antidotes only causes them to proliferate. It wastes time, it strains resources, and it stifles productivity.

With all this in mind, we hesitate before airing professional grievances. We ensure we have a proposed solution in tow before sounding the alarm.

Shift the setting outside the office walls though, and it’s far different. We openly gripe about ignorance, without offering up any strategies to combat it. And we grow agitated as history repeats itself.

Why do we expect anything different? Ignorance can’t fix itself, after all. That’s the whole premise of the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

No, to flip the script, we need to take command. We need to lift the torch high and shine a light for the wayward to follow.

We must serve as a guide, not a gate. We must meet the ignorant where they are, and shepherd them to where they ought to be.

Such a shift requires humility on our end. It requires conscientiousness. It requires virtue.

This is no small ask. But the benefits far outweigh the costs.

So, let’s do our part. Let’s help cast off the burden of ignorance. And let’s lift our society into a more enlightened future.

It’s our move. Let’s make it.