Knowing What You Don’t Know

Putting ego and pride before wisdom happens with managers.  It does not happen with leaders and it is those leaders who run successful businesses and organizations.
       
These leaders have learned that one of the biggest performance barriers has nothing to do with weak sales, sloppy strategic planning or lackluster employees.  It’s an individual hurdle every professional faces: knowing and admitting what you don’t know.
 
A leader’s ability to recognize gaps in their knowledge – and find ways to plug them—propels their business.  Managers who see themselves as a jack-of-all-trades and repeatedly take on duties for which they’re unqualified (recognize ego and pride here?), end up hurting their business, their performance and the performance of everyone around them.
 
It sounds simple enough, simply admit what you don’t know and address it. Yet in the crush of business, owners and executives of start-up businesses or small businesses often make a big mistake by not taking the time to sit back, assess the situation and recognize that their ability and knowledge has flaws.  Instead they will plow ahead, causing harm.
          
What makes it so hard for owners and executives to be leaders and confront what they don’t know? For starters, these entrepreneurs have grown so accustomed to improvising and being somewhat successful up to a point, that they assume they’ll continue to be successful and learn on the job, simply by doing.
 
Have you fallen into this trap? I have and most managers who have become leaders will likely admit they have done the same.  If you feel you have escaped this trap, then you are either an incredible leader or still putting your ego and pride ahead of everything else.  The latter will recognize themselves in the following statements:
 
– In my job I never have all the information I want when a decision must be made, so I am paid to do the best with what I have.
 
– My boss is happy with what I am doing.  My boss would laugh if I said “I don’t know enough about this, I want to learn more before I tackle this problem.”
 
– Starting a new business is a leap of faith. I am too busy building my business to worry about what I don’t know.
 
Another reason owners and executives won’t admit what they don’t know is because it took guts to start their business.  They risked a lot, they cherish their independence and don’t want any assistance.  Despite their initial success these businesses are in trouble.
 
Examine your own knowledge of businesses that have come and gone and businesses that are going strong and are successful.  One of the most common differences- the failed business will have had one individual driver, while the successful business has built a team around the business and has had a mentor or advisory board.  The successful business will not have operated in a vacuum.
 
Self-confidence, initiative and passion are all prerequisite for building a business. But too much confidence (or ego or pride) will convince you that you know what you’re doing when you really don’t, causing you to hurt the business by operating in areas far from your field of expertise.
 
So what do you do?  Seek help to identify what you don’t know.  Talk to your employees, talk to your professional friends or someone you used to work with or better yet manage. Listen, be introspective.  A growing leader will begin to acknowledge where their knowledge is lacking or areas they struggle with in business.
 
A book I read when I was a young manager, full of ego and pride, was Tom Peter’s In Search of Excellence. One term that stayed with me was “MBWA- management by wandering around.”  In my career I have been the CEO of small businesses and large businesses.  No matter the size, most days I did my “MBWA”.  Despite having other executives tell me “I don’t have time to wander around,” nothing I could have done at my desk was more valuable than what I learned during my “wandering around.”
 
I learned about families, vacations, upcoming celebrations and life’s struggles.  I became human to employees (fancy that, the CEO cares). I found out what was impacting their performance, what they thought, what they would do.  My management team started “MBWA” also and not just in their own department.  I am proud to say at every business, performance was high, and record setting years occurred.  Not because of me or even my senior managers. It was due to the right people being put in the best position to be successful and everyone understanding that if they did not know the answer, it was OK to seek out someone who did.
 
So try “MBWA”. Ask the people around you, “What do you need to know to do your job?” Sit with them at their desks and ask them about the processes they’ve adopted; the systems they use and the knowledge they draw upon.   The answers will surprise you, especially after they get accustomed to the surprise of you asking.
 
Kick off every staff meeting by going around the room and asking participants to volunteer something they’ve recently learned about the business.
 
By showing you’re constantly hungry for knowledge, you create an open culture that facilitates the free exchange of ideas. And the best part of all is that you’ll maintain a high degree of self-awareness: You’ll act on what you know — and take steps to find out what you don’t.  You will park your ego and pride and become one heck of a leader!