Be informed
August 27th 2009 08:50
Seth Godin has a blog that I read practically every day...and I'll tell you why. Because there's a way to subscribe to it that means you get every blog post sent to your email. For me this is a far more effective method than the RSS feed approach where the blog posts land up somewhere that you can access but don't in the process catch your attention.
That's not actually what I wanted to say about Seth, however. In a fairly recent post, he makes a couple of points that are worth considering further - or reflecting on, as some would have it. (To me 'reflecting on it' often means that they shove it to the back of their mind and if they remember to come back to it they may do some more thinking...)
His first point is that if you want to challenge the status quo, you need to know more than the status quo. You can't beat them at their own game by knowing less. (Seth is never anything but blunt: he seldom provides a mattress for you to fall back on.) I quote: Be skeptical, but be informed (about everything important, not just this issue, of course). Screaming ignorance gets attention, but it distracts us from the work at hand.
Seth ends by making his second point, which is aligned to the first: If you want to change what your boss believes, or the strategy your company is following, the first step is to figure out how to be the best informed person in the room. Figuring out how to be the best informed person in the room is not always an easy task, but it's what you'll need to do to be one step (at least) ahead of the opposition, or the boss, or the system.
Don't write to the newspapers and reveal your ignorance. Write and show that you know far more than most people who write. Don't join demonstrations and mingle with the ignoramuses who have some idea about what they're doing there, but no real clues. Make sure you're up with those who have really done their homework.
You can't argue with politicians unless you've got the facts to hand. They'll wiggle out of most things unless they're confronted by their own words condemning them.
I love my boss greatly; he knows everything I don't know and far more. But because I deal with detail, sometimes I can catch him out, as when the other day he repeated that old myth that we only use ten percent of our brains. I was onto him like a shot. Not only had I just read a few days before someone dismissing this very myth with good sound information, but I knew in the back of my head that it was incorrect. But saying that he was wrong wasn't enough. I needed to go away and get information down on paper for him, to prove my case.
That's a mild version of what Seth Godin is talking about, but it's along the same lines.
Photo by Jesse Draper.
That's not actually what I wanted to say about Seth, however. In a fairly recent post, he makes a couple of points that are worth considering further - or reflecting on, as some would have it. (To me 'reflecting on it' often means that they shove it to the back of their mind and if they remember to come back to it they may do some more thinking...)
His first point is that if you want to challenge the status quo, you need to know more than the status quo. You can't beat them at their own game by knowing less. (Seth is never anything but blunt: he seldom provides a mattress for you to fall back on.) I quote: Be skeptical, but be informed (about everything important, not just this issue, of course). Screaming ignorance gets attention, but it distracts us from the work at hand.
Seth ends by making his second point, which is aligned to the first: If you want to change what your boss believes, or the strategy your company is following, the first step is to figure out how to be the best informed person in the room. Figuring out how to be the best informed person in the room is not always an easy task, but it's what you'll need to do to be one step (at least) ahead of the opposition, or the boss, or the system.
Don't write to the newspapers and reveal your ignorance. Write and show that you know far more than most people who write. Don't join demonstrations and mingle with the ignoramuses who have some idea about what they're doing there, but no real clues. Make sure you're up with those who have really done their homework.
You can't argue with politicians unless you've got the facts to hand. They'll wiggle out of most things unless they're confronted by their own words condemning them.
I love my boss greatly; he knows everything I don't know and far more. But because I deal with detail, sometimes I can catch him out, as when the other day he repeated that old myth that we only use ten percent of our brains. I was onto him like a shot. Not only had I just read a few days before someone dismissing this very myth with good sound information, but I knew in the back of my head that it was incorrect. But saying that he was wrong wasn't enough. I needed to go away and get information down on paper for him, to prove my case.
That's a mild version of what Seth Godin is talking about, but it's along the same lines.
Photo by Jesse Draper.
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