“Knowing is half the battle.”
Thanks G.I. Joe, for that bit of wisdom. And for our current society and educational system, this statement has been forced down upon us, to be taken as gospel truth.
The truth is, it is much, much, less than half.
I used to think that if I knew, then I’d be able to do anything . It’s so much more complicated than that.
Why is knowledge overrated? And what do you do about it?
Knowledge is power – or so I thought
Here in the Philippines, a famous weatherman would always end his reports with the phrase – “knowledge is power.”
And as a kid, I believed it.
I read as much as I could, and tried to learn as much as my abilities allowed me to.
Maybe, that was true in school, where your performance is measured by how well you retain and recall information – during assessments, exams, and recitations.
Your success is measured by the amount of knowledge that you can recall.
In the real world, it’s not so clear cut.
So what if I understood how to do differential equations, what are the parts of the body, and how to write a business plan?
Knowledge is only useful to a certain extent.
It’s about application
The true value of knowledge, is when you know how to apply it, and to get results that you, or that other people, value.
When I began working, people didn’t care about the wealth of knowledge that I had. It didn’t matter to them if I knew how financial models worked, what leadership practices were cutting edge, or that I sort of knew how to program spreadsheets.
What mattered to them, was if I could get the results.
Looking back, in all the meetings that I attended, and in all the interviews that I had, the one practice I could have done, to get picked more often, and to be given opportunities more frequently, was this:
Demonstrate that you can get the results that they want, not the knowledge of it.
I used to have an idea to create an online application for filing taxes. I had some knowledge of programming, but I could always partner up with somebody. I also had knowledge on filing, and how to do and submit taxes.
But I did not feel confident to execute and apply.
What happened? There were several others who went through with it. Even though I had the idea first, and the knowledge, because I didn’t apply it, I didn’t have any results.
It’s not the knowledge that is valuable in itself. It’s what you do with it.
It’s what it enables you to do.
Application and execution is paramount
Because you can have all the information and knowledge in the world, but if you don’t know how to apply it, how to get results with it, then it is the same as having none of that information and knowledge in the first place.
It’s like a story that I’m all to familiar with – two people have the exact same idea for a business. Both of them get to work, starting at the same time.
Both of them, knowledgeable, smart, and with connections to partners and suppliers.
How does it happen, then, that after a year, One person has already put up the business, and is making sales, while another person is still stuck in research and preparation mode?
Knowledge is only useful in so far as we know how to apply it, and the results that it gets us.
Find ways to get results.
What results will your knowledge help you to achieve? Go out and do it.
How will your knowledge benefit others? Go out and share it.
How can your knowledge, when applied, help others get results that they want? Go out and teach it.
People don’t care about the knowledge.
But people care, ultimately, about what results and value your knowledge can provide.
What’s something you know that can help others? Please let me know in the comments below!
Leave a Reply