Managers and executives fall into the dangerous trap of assumed knowledge. Given very little or no information at all, they assume and clearly know what is going on in a department; with a customer; or on the factory floor when in fact they are in the fog. Nevertheless, they create some version of the events because they must know- they are the boss and bosses are supposed to know everything.

Why do managers do this? Ego. That's it. They are the boss, so they must know everything. They assume because of some past experience they had in a different situation, then it must be true in all situations. This leads to bad decisions that get some serious spin when the confronted with reality where reality shows up in the form of poor business performance numbers. This poor performance gets spun with executive speak that boils down to nothing more than “it’s someone else’s fault”, but gets interpreted as “we are clueless but hope you hadn’t noticed”.

Don't fall into the assumed knowledge trap- don't answer questions you don't know the answer to and don't assume you know what is going on when you don't. Your choices are not always between good and bad. Sometimes they are between bad and worse. While it is bad to not know what is going on, it is worse to assume you know.