Admitting what you don’t know

• You may have exposure to the business by working for decades in the IT area that supports the specific business area.
• You may really understand accounting systems or customer relationship management systems because you have build a similar system before.
• You may really understand deriviatives because you designed and coded a system for that purpose.
• You may have studied economics in college to receive a degree but took the direction to work in the field of information technology.

This is a very dangerous place to be. If you believe that your experience provides you with enough knowledge to compete with the business community, your listening and absorbing filters are clogged. You will miss the nuance of hearing the business user’s perspective on the subject. You are telling yourself, “I know this” instead of asking yourself  ”how WELL do I know this.” (A famous observation by Jeffrey Gitomer.)

You don’t build the best system for the business by building what you know from past experience. You build the best system by building what the business community wants! You don’t engage the business community by showing off your knowledge. You engage them by letting them talk about their perspective on the topic.

Engagement is based upon trust. You earn the trust of the business community by admitting what you don’t know.

Napoleon Hill made these two observations that applies to how the business community trusts:

1. it is impossible for your words and acts to carry sincerity unless they are based on truth, and
2. there is a sixth sense that warns us when someone is speaking falsely.

Unclog your filters. Realize that you do not know the business from the business person’s perspective. Admit what you don’t know.

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