Common Knowledge, It Ain't that Common

That thing you thought was common knowledge, you know, that thing you think everybody does, it's probably something you're extra-super-ridiculously good at doing. 

And, just maybe nobody else is as good as you at that thing.

A couple of times during the past week I've had conversations where people mention an experience where they showed something to someone else, and that someone else was wowed by it. Curiously, the person who thought that thing was common knowledge was equally wowed by the wow factor of something they took for granted.

That was probably hard to follow, so here's an example.

One day I was sitting around a conference table in a big formal meeting room at a company who had just hired me to do some consulting. We were going to do an employee engagement survey and then I was going to do some coaching. I would start the coaching with the senior team first and then, over a period of months, cascade that down to all the leaders in the organization. 

On this day, I was meeting with the senior team, showing them the roadmap we were embarking on. It was a beautifully sparkly roadmap with lots of exciting twists and turns and a perfectly amazing destination. During the conversation we got into some detail about some of the pain points they were experiencing. I pulled from some of my experience as a front-line manager in a large corporation, and something weird happened.

When I started giving some tactical ideas from my experience, they opened their notebooks and started writing and asking a lot of clarifying questions.

"You're kidding" was my thought at the time. "I've been trying to show you all the bells and whistles and crazy cool stuff we're going to do, and THIS is the stuff you take notes on?"

This was all the stuff I'd been doing for years. The stuff I thought every leader at every level of every organization was doing just to survive. You know, the common knowledge.

Turns out, it wasn't common at all. And as I thought about it afterward, the things I was sharing, were things I had come up with on some of the toughest days during some of the most heated battles.

They were wowed. And I was wowed that they were wowed.

So that thing you do so well, that you thought everyone was doing. That common knowledge. Maybe it's not so common. It's probably a special talent you have.

When you discover your talents, you should do all you can to use them every day. That's how you'll add value to everything you touch.

I'm Ryan Houmand. I coach people. I train people. I speak to organizations and teams. Here's where you can find out more. Connect with me, please. We'll talk, maybe I can help, maybe not. No big whoop.