- First, there are the things you know. This means you know the question and you know the answer.
- Then there are things you know you don’t know. This means you know the question but you don’t know the answer.
- And finally there are things you don’t know that you don’t know. This means you don’t even know what the relevant questions are.
In response to Seth Godin’s question “Tell me again why you’re a generalist?” I would answer that specialists are what is called for when the questions are known but you need the answers. When the questions are not known, who ya gonna call? The generalist.
In any of those situations, it’s possible to be wrong. When you’re wrong, reality has a habit of correcting you. This can be quite costly, but the costs increase with the tennacity with which you hang on to your wrong answers. Costs can become worse when you hang on to the wrong questions. Specialists (especially experienced and renowned ones) are often guilty of hanging on to the wrong questions. That’s another case when a generalist can help.
In business – especially when past performance is no guarantee of future results it’s easy to get the questions wrong. That means when you’re opening (or creating) a new market, launching a new product or playing at a level you’ve never played before. In cases like that – call a generalist.
Takeaways:
- It’s usually better to assume you’re wrong and have reality prove you right than to assume you’re right and have reality prove you wrong.
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