People Who Dare to Have No Idea What They’re Doing at Work Are Phenomenal
Watch your career explode when you master this skill.
The business world worships professionals. I worship a different god: unprofessionals.
Let me explain. I like the person who joins the company and clearly isn’t qualified. The fact they have the audacity to come in, pretend, and figure it all out is jaw-dropping.
Professionals are a problem. They think they know it all.
A person who knows nothing is a secret learner in disguise. I once worked at a company where there was a leadership opportunity that became available. All the people in my team were encouraged to apply. None of us did. We were scared. An outsider joined the company. They pretended they knew how to do the job, even though they had never done it.
We quickly learned that his skills were worse than ours. It ended up being a missed opportunity. Why? He joined with no idea, pretended and then learned along the way how to do the job he wasn’t qualified for.
I probably shouldn’t admit this
I learned from this man’s example and copied him. About twelve months ago I joined an IT company. My background was in finance. Now it was my job to fuse finance and IT together.
The hiring manager thought I knew about IT. I had absolutely no idea. The first six months were rough. I smashed my head against the wall each day out of frustration. My colleagues would talk about agile, cloud, coding, and testing like it was obvious. I had no idea.
One customer asked me how I would suggest they implement more virtual machines in their environment. I had to google both concepts. I had no idea what an environment was, and virtual machines didn’t appear in the movie Terminator 2 (my only IT education).
Still, 12 months on, I figured it all out. I’ve become an IT expert and can hold a conversation with people who write code for a living.
You’ve got to have no idea to get anywhere in life. You can’t start with “knowing.”
Not knowing forces you to get your shit together
Having no idea = urgency.
Everybody wants to schedule time for learning. Yet, we rarely do. A recent reader told me they desperately wanted to do my writing course but couldn’t find the time. The problem wasn’t the time. The problem was forced urgency.
When you go to work each day and have no idea what you’re doing, you’ve got to level-up in the corporate game much faster. There’s no time for comfort.
You throw yourself into meetings you normally wouldn’t be in and hope for the best. You get good at being asked questions and then flipping the question back on the asker so you can learn what the hell they’re talking about.
“That’s a good question. Before I give my perspective, I’d love to hear your answer.”
Want to learn faster? Put yourself in situations where people think you know what you’re doing. You’ll learn fast when you have to.
Become a 6-figure fly on the wall
In the next life I want to be a fly.
The people who get paid the most in their careers are the flies on the wall.
Flies on the wall get to do nothing, and learn everything. I was a banking fly on the wall. I sat in rooms with some of the biggest tech companies on the planet. I had no idea what I was doing. You know how I became the fly?
I made friends with a farmer. I met the farmer in the lift. I took an interest in his family. I asked him about his farm — a lot. I went to the Christmas party with him and got to know him over a few beers.
The farmer became a friend. Then when he needed someone for his team, I was the first person that got asked. The job wasn’t advertised. A few people internally were allowed to apply. Those people were rejected before they even applied. Why?
Rapport always crushes another boring resume.
The farmer hired me because he liked me. I asked him at the end of our epic time together about whether he knew that I had no idea.
“I knew the whole time you were acting,” he said. “But I knew you had the ability to learn as you go, so it wasn’t a factor in my decision. If you became a fly on the wall with the right mindset, you were always going to succeed.”
The most inspiring leader I have ever worked with taught me the fly on the wall principle. Why can’t you be a fly on the wall and 10X your career?
Know-it-alls don’t know anything
I love stepping into a meeting with a know-it-all and watching them make an idiot of themselves. It’s better than watching Jerry Seinfeld do comedy. Know-it-alls are entertainment for your viewing pleasure. What do they lack?
Self-awareness.
If they could just playback a recording of their meeting speech they would see how blinded they are by their own awesomeness.
You cure the disease of being smart by shutting up and listening. Questions can heal you too.
You don’t know that much. In terms of information about your industry, you know hardly anything. You just think you know a lot. The experience section on your resume has got you drunk on non-alcoholic fruit punch.
Be the dumbest person in the room to watch your career explode. Celebrate with a shot of vodka after a year.
You get stuck in your career when you know everything
I get weird messages on LinkedIn all the time that basically say the same thing: “I feel stuck…blah blah blah.”
You feel stuck when you think you know everything. The way to accelerate your career at a hundred miles an hour in the fast lane while flipping your middle finger at the traffic is to have no idea what you’re doing.
I didn’t start out being so hardcore. A near-miss with cancer forced me to take a different approach. I said this to a person who tried to destroy my career:
“The worst thing you can do is mess with a guy who has nothing to lose. I’m that guy, pal. I just got out of hospital and narrowly avoided a run in with old mate cancer. Now I go back every year to get tested. So I got nothing to lose. This glorious career could all end tomorrow. So I got a question for you: Is that a guy you want to make up lies about and attempt to bring down?”
I never heard from that dude again. He didn’t meet his match. Nope. He met a person who understood through experience that we’re not getting out of this life alive. So, I ask you again, what have you got to lose? Answer: nothing.
Put yourself in a situation where you have no idea but have to pretend you do. You’ll go from being the imposter, to the master, if you dare to.
Having no idea is a glorious feeling
Humans get hooked on feelings. It’s why you eat choc top ice creams while watching a movie. It’s a feeling. It feels good to break the vegan laws, milk a cow, and eat ice cream.
The feeling of not knowing what you’re doing is the best feeling in the world.
You’ve got a minuscule amount of downside, and ten times the upside, if you succeed in pulling it off and giving a Nicole Kidman performance. Channel your inner Nicole. Act.
Working in a corporation is just acting.
Go to acting school by having no idea what you’re doing and pretending you do. It feels good. If you pull it off you’ll feel unstoppable. Unstoppable people change the world.
Practice being an unprofessional amateur
Professionals seek titles and lukewarm applause. Unprofessional amateurs become leaders and make more money so they don’t have to work as hard. (You may even make enough money to retire early, and then realize you want to go back to work — just not for the money.)
You can hire a professional but then you have to listen to their ego every day. You also have to watch their ego and overconfidence destroy all of the business opportunities. Why would you do that?
The truth is we’re all amateurs. The only true expert is google, although even she can be manipulated with growth hacking B.S.
The best leaders do it
Pop open a business book. Read about the CEO of “XYZ” tech company who saved the planet from starvation and built a recyclable toilet you can park in the middle of the desert for $2.99.
They all do it. They all give the same advice. “I started out having no idea what I was doing. Then I figured it out.”
Some version of that shows up in between all the success highlights and high-fives. This cliche advice shows up over and over because it’s true. There are two levels in your career.
Level One: Dare to be an amateur so you can learn 10X faster. Level Two: Help another person do the same.
Two amateurs with a learning mindset are always better than one.
Not knowing what you’re doing forces you to get started, learn, grow, iterate, help others, make friends, hang out with a farmer, and dial your ego down so you can do the best work of your life.
