As experienced professionals we have a tendency to assume that even if we don’t know everything we know an awful lot. We may do – but this is a dangerous assumption and there is a lot we don’t know.
Science provides a useful road map for knowledge here. As this article in Live Science explains The answer to the enduring question of the smallest thing in the universe has evolved along with humanity. People once thought grains of sand were the building blocks of what we see around us. Then the atom was discovered, and it was thought indivisible, until it was split to reveal protons, neutrons and electrons inside. These too, seemed like fundamental particles, before scientists discovered that protons and neutrons are made of three quarks each.
“Quarks” for those of us who don’t know everything are a type of elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons. Now this articleabout Atlas which is one of the six particle accelerators at CERN's Large Hadron Collider facilities in Switzerland asks if in fact quarks themselves have sub components asking But are quarks fundamental? ATLAS searched for signs that quarks may have substructure in its most recent data, collected from the LHC’s proton-proton collisions in 2012. This seems to have been supported by further experiments – see this article.
In Douglas Adams Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy the man who ruled the universe turned out to be a solitary individual who questioned everything he could not feel or touch – see this summary. The characters conclude that “the universe is in good hands.”
This may be going a bit far in real professional life but keeping an awareness of how little we really know and how much we should keep learning is very healthy. Malcolm Forbes the American entrepreneur who published Forbes magazine said What's an expert? I read somewhere, that the more a man knows, the more he knows, he doesn't know. So I suppose one definition of an expert would be someone who doesn't admit out loud that he knows enough about a subject to know he doesn't really know how much.
And recognising and retaining such expertise in organisations can be a real challenge even in this day and age when you can Google anything (witness my research into quarks!). This Harvard Business School article Make Yourself an Expertdiscusses this problem identifying colleagues who have “deep smarts”—business-critical expertise, built up through years of experience, which helps them make wise, swift decisions about both strategy and tactics.
As this second Harvard article comments: Asked if he would be willing to share his hard-earned knowledge with others in the company before he retired, the engineer laughed. “Why would I do that?” he asked. “First off, I don’t owe this company anything more. I’ve given 35 years to this outfit, and I hope they miss me when I’m gone. Or,” he added with a bit of a twinkle, “hire me back at double pay as a consultant.”
So I suggest as professionals we need to recognise how little we do know even as experts, and to develop an attitude and a mind-set of continual learning. As Henry Ford said Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.
At the same time as cultivating this individual approach we should seek ways to recognise and retain expertise in professional firms, encouraging knowledge sharing throughout the organisation. As the Dalai Lama said Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality.
Science provides a useful road map for knowledge here. As this article in Live Science explains The answer to the enduring question of the smallest thing in the universe has evolved along with humanity. People once thought grains of sand were the building blocks of what we see around us. Then the atom was discovered, and it was thought indivisible, until it was split to reveal protons, neutrons and electrons inside. These too, seemed like fundamental particles, before scientists discovered that protons and neutrons are made of three quarks each.
“Quarks” for those of us who don’t know everything are a type of elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons. Now this articleabout Atlas which is one of the six particle accelerators at CERN's Large Hadron Collider facilities in Switzerland asks if in fact quarks themselves have sub components asking But are quarks fundamental? ATLAS searched for signs that quarks may have substructure in its most recent data, collected from the LHC’s proton-proton collisions in 2012. This seems to have been supported by further experiments – see this article.
In Douglas Adams Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy the man who ruled the universe turned out to be a solitary individual who questioned everything he could not feel or touch – see this summary. The characters conclude that “the universe is in good hands.”
This may be going a bit far in real professional life but keeping an awareness of how little we really know and how much we should keep learning is very healthy. Malcolm Forbes the American entrepreneur who published Forbes magazine said What's an expert? I read somewhere, that the more a man knows, the more he knows, he doesn't know. So I suppose one definition of an expert would be someone who doesn't admit out loud that he knows enough about a subject to know he doesn't really know how much.
And recognising and retaining such expertise in organisations can be a real challenge even in this day and age when you can Google anything (witness my research into quarks!). This Harvard Business School article Make Yourself an Expertdiscusses this problem identifying colleagues who have “deep smarts”—business-critical expertise, built up through years of experience, which helps them make wise, swift decisions about both strategy and tactics.
As this second Harvard article comments: Asked if he would be willing to share his hard-earned knowledge with others in the company before he retired, the engineer laughed. “Why would I do that?” he asked. “First off, I don’t owe this company anything more. I’ve given 35 years to this outfit, and I hope they miss me when I’m gone. Or,” he added with a bit of a twinkle, “hire me back at double pay as a consultant.”
So I suggest as professionals we need to recognise how little we do know even as experts, and to develop an attitude and a mind-set of continual learning. As Henry Ford said Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.
At the same time as cultivating this individual approach we should seek ways to recognise and retain expertise in professional firms, encouraging knowledge sharing throughout the organisation. As the Dalai Lama said Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality.
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