KnowsJack

Knows­Jack is my new blog site for what is really a very old (hope­fully you read this as “wise”) con­sult­ing busi­ness.  I wanted to do some­thing a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent than a tra­di­tional con­sul­tancy site, and the name — I hope — gives you a sense of who I am, how I think, and what it is like to work with me.

We all know the phrase, “He doesn’t know jack” in which the final noun is often left off and mean­ing that one doesn’t even know, um, much at all.

But most peo­ple don’t know, nor pause to think of, is that the oppo­site of that phrase, “…he knows jack”, means pretty much the same thing.  It is a yin-yan of unknow­ing — either way that phrase is said, it sug­gests igno­rance.  And over the years I’ve learned a lot about igno­rance.  And the more I’ve learned about it, the more I’ve come to like it.  It is a reli­gion of sorts for me, spelled with a cap­i­tal “I”, Ignorance.

Far from being equiv­a­lent to the prac­tice of stu­pid­ity, Igno­rance has amaz­ing pow­ers and is very dif­fi­cult to prac­tice.  Here are a cou­ple of examples.

• Sup­pose you are a prod­uct man­ager for a large com­pany.  You’re doing well, devel­op­ing and mar­ket­ing your prod­uct, but always wish you were doing bet­ter.  Of course.  Your head is filled with knowl­edge about spec­i­fi­ca­tions, designs, research, feed­back, and a mil­lion other fac­tors that you must han­dle every day.  And yet, which one of these pieces of infor­ma­tion will help you take your prod­uct to the next level?

• Or let’s say that you are a small busi­ness owner and you spend much of your day ensur­ing that every­thing is run­ning well-enough…and yet you know that you and your com­pany could be doing much bet­ter.  You know a lot about your busi­ness, but some of what you actu­ally know is far more impor­tant than the rest of what you know.

We all know peo­ple in these sit­u­a­tions.  How often do you hear some­one lament­ing that despite how well they are doing, they could “…do much bet­ter if only.…”?

So what they don’t yet know is pretty valu­able, even if they already know it but can’t pick it out.  And there is more.  There are things that they don’t even know that they need to know, things about their cus­tomer, their prod­uct, their business…all of that, and often they are the things that are among the most valu­able to know.  They are the game-changers.  They are the sources of trans­for­ma­tion.

This can sound like a bit of a logic game, but it isn’t.  It is just some­thing that we don’t really stop to con­sider.  It is a very sharp two-edged sword, this igno­rance.  By being able to prac­tice Ignore-ance, we allow our­selves to focus on those things we con­sider most rel­e­vant.  But most of our poten­tial for growth lies in those things that we do ignore or are igno­rant of.

And get­ting to know them starts with the Dis­ci­pline of Ignorance.

For­get What You Know…and Become an Un-Knowitall

Ever noticed how get­ting away from the office, home, what­ever for a few days, seems to clear your head and give you some fresh per­spec­tive?  That’s Igno­rance in action.  Its effect is directly pro­por­tional to how much you “for­get about every­thing”.  We don’t use that phrase by acci­dent and we usu­ally don’t real­ize what we are actu­ally say­ing: our best insights often come as a result of chang­ing our prac­tice of “ignore-ance”. I’ll sub­mit to you here that the more you can become an “Un-Knowitall”, the more you’ll learn,  suc­ceed, and find enjoy­ment in what you are doing.

If you think I’m kid­ding about this, just play­ing with words, then please stay tuned for future install­ments.  I can tell you now that the smartest peo­ple in the world are prac­ti­tion­ers of this very dis­ci­pline, and it is, at its roots, a tenet of Bhud­dism.  This is not For­est Gump.  Think empty mind.  Igno­rance is pow­er­ful stuff, but not really part of the usual busi­ness vocab­u­lary. In a world where every day we are called on to be knowl­edge­able, in charge, in control…forgetting about every­thing is not really an option and being called Igno­rant is not some­thing most of us aspire to.

And hence the slightly tongue-in-cheek name, Knows­Jack.  Much like I work with my clients to help them dis­cover what is unknown and hence most valu­able, I’ll work here in this blog to take us to the outer banks of unknow­ing­ness, where we don’t know what we don’t know.  And we’ll come back with solid gold.  Con­trar­i­ans, for sure.  You will see what was not vis­i­ble before.  It’s not magic, though it can seem that way.  But it does take prac­tice and years of expe­ri­ence.  It takes an unwill­ing­ness to ever be happy with an answer — a desire to be igno­rant rather than knowledgeable.

So here on KnowsJack.com, or work­ing by your side, I’m ded­i­cated to tak­ing this jour­ney with you.

What Knows­Jack Can Do for You

I would be remiss if I did not actu­ally let you know what I can do for you.  I have four main areas that I work in: Exec­u­tive Coach­ing, Com­pany Posi­tion­ing, Cus­tomer Under­stand­ing, and Busi­ness Development.

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