Whenever your manager says or does anything—and not just your manager, but the company itself, its competitors, and quite possibly everyone—it’s useful to interpret their actions on four levels.
The first is the direct level. What do the words they’re saying mean in the most obvious and literal way? Let’s say your manager says to you, in a frustrated way, “Why is it taking so long to finish the [task you’re working on]?” with just enough hint of frustration in his voice. The first way to analyze this and respond to this is to answer that question. He’s asking the question, and he’s your manager, so if you don’t answer it, there will be even more frustration. This is why, whenever I’m asked a question, even when I have lots to say or lots of context I want to provide, I start by giving the simple answer, and often warning, “Here’s the simple answer, and after I tell it to you, I’m going to dive in deeper to explain it more.”
The second is the symbolic level. Most questions, actually most words, operate on a symbolic level on top of the literal level. And the more complex the situation, the more important the symbolic level will be. In the above example, his question about you doing your work is symbolically important because he’s not just asking a question and wanting an answer; he is conveying to you the symbolic message that he cares about what you’re doing. He wants you to finish it, and he wants to demonstrate to you that he’s on top of it. It’s important to him. If it weren’t important to him, he wouldn’t ask it at all! So, ask yourself: “Why is he even asking this to me? What is the symbolic message he is trying to send?” One of the most important patterns behind all the advice in these chapters, and in my worldview, is that symbolism matters, and no matter how much you ignore it or pretend it’s not important, it just matters more and more deeply every day—so you must always pay careful attention to every symbol you perceive or you make, and make sure you’re signaling the symbols that support your strategy. (And to do that, you first need to have a strategy!)
The third is the root level. If you ask yourself why the symbolism is important, and why the direct question is also important, you can uncover what is really happening. This perhaps is the result of asking the five whys to get to the core. Why is your doing this important to him? Because the initiative moving ahead is dependent on you doing this piece, and he’s under massive pressure from his bosses to get it moving yesterday and deliver the needed results yesterday. It’s the pressure on him that is building up that is causing him to ask that question.
The fourth and final level is the esoteric level. This is the capstone on the previous three, and all four taken together are what the ancients called “Pardes” analyses, which is an old Hebrew word for “garden.” This esoteric level may or may not apply, at every level from the smallest to the biggest level. The way to think about this level is, what’s The Big Idea in his mind that your manager just can’t talk about? Maybe he can’t talk about it because he hasn’t fully explored it in his mind. Or maybe he can’t talk about it because it’s only the seed of an idea. Or maybe he can’t talk about it because it’s only an instinct, and he hasn’t even thought through or understands this instinct yet. Or maybe he can’t talk about it because he’s asking you this question as part of some grander strategy of his—maybe that question is a test of some sort to you (and remember we’ve discussed treating all questions as tests.) Or maybe he can’t talk about it because that question is a part of a much bigger plan that he’s waiting until all the pieces are in place to unveil, and you just don’t know it. Or maybe he can’t talk about it because it is, very literally, ineffable. Or maybe he can’t talk about it because it’s too painful. Or maybe it could be that he’s working and planning and making things happen on a level that you don’t know and that you may never even know. In other words—and this may be the uniting underlying insight behind the humility with which we need to always approach everyone we work with—you truly don’t even know what you don’t even know, but it’s much more extreme and stronger than that: you can’t even imagine what you can’t even imagine.
