the luxury of ignorance

Last week I was invited to a meeting to provide my "expert opinion." So I showed up not knowing anything - I didn't even know what the meeting was about. As I sat there listening to the group, I realized that I didn't have a clue what they were talking about.

"business transformation" 

"functional initiatives" 

"global optimization" 

"outsourcing"

"milestones" 

"buy in and adoption"

I finally interjected and said - I don't have a clue what you are talking about. They all sort of looked around for someone to explain it to me and realized that they didn't really know either. They had been so used to using these words that they couldn't explain simply what they were doing. We had a great conversation as they all tried to explain it to me in their own words. We also opened up some real misunderstandings and areas needing further discussion.

Being the new person in the room allows you to ask the "dumb" questions. The luxury of ignorance.

But what if we were prepared to own it we were confused? I have been afraid to ask the questions sometimes because it looked like everyone else knew what was going on and I didn't want to slow it down, or assumed I would be able to pick it up later, or thought I should already know this stuff.

It takes courage to ask questions or to say that you don't know something.

Last week Rod Odom, President of BellSouth, gave a great presentation on lessons he learned as a leader. He told a story from college which reminded me of this topic. He sat in a class for a week and didn't understand a thing the professor was talking about. He was about to drop the class when one of the other students stood up and told the professor that he couldn't follow any of the lectures. It turns out this class had been mislabeled in the curriculum as level 1 but was actually part 3 of a series. The professor restructured the class and Rod said it was the best class he ever took. I think about the courage it took for that one student to stand up. And the huge benefits the rest of the class (and the professor) got from it.

What a great learning.