Do now: how to learn what you don’t know.
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- Local Learnings, on issues other communities are facing and how they are addressing them in a future-ready manner,
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I had another article lined up for this slot, but when I found this one this morning, I knew I had to change my plans.
So often, especially as professionals working on improving our communities, we think that we have the answers, or at least most of them. We trust in our own rightness, and we’re confident, so confident, in our ability to figure it out based on what we already know. But our world views are limited and our educations left a lot out. Too often, we have no idea what we don’t know.
You should read this brief article, because the story is brilliantly told and it’s one that I couldn’t tell at this point in my life. But the magic words are embedded at the end:
Tell me more.
It’s very easy for a smartie like me to tell you that you misunderstood, that your facts are wrong, that you’re wrong. But my confidence in my rightness is based on very limited information — even if my knowledge looks enormous to me.
If I ask you to tell me more, chances are I will learn Something. About the world that I don’t see, about you, about me. About a different way of seeing and interpreting that might open up whole new possibilities. About something that I didn’t know.
And that something I didn’t know might be the key to solving a challenge I haven’t been able to solve using just the stuff that’s already in my head.
Thank God that I can ask you to tell me more.
