To know or to understand, that is the question...

For thirty years I have crafted welcoming messages to my students. This quarter is no different with one exception... with the start of my 31st year as an adjunct, I am now at the University of Washington. Because I feel it is applicable, I have also decided to share my message with my followers on LinkedIn.

I tend to believe it is impossible to be “wrong” headed. The idea assumes there is such a thing as being “right” headed. I do however; believe it is possible to be closed-minded. I also believe we can be smart and know things, and still be ignorant and incompetent.

I believe your mental model is just that, a model, a collection of mindsets. Models are constructs we use to predict outcomes. So, your mental model is not the real world; it is how you see the real world. Mental models are never perfect and always under construction.

I also believe as individuals, we are free to experience, learn, grow and develop our mental models. To refuse to learn is a choice; a choice to be closed-minded; while closed minds may grow, they may never develop.

I also believe there is a difference between “knowing” and “understanding”. Knowing is what we get from “common sense”, input from our five common senses. In other words, common sense is what tells us the earth is flat – so common sense is ‘knowing something’, but not necessarily ‘understanding’ it.

Practices like memorizing allow us to know things as ‘content’, but knowing a ‘definition’ of strategy is not the same as understanding the ‘concept’ of strategy. The same is true of knowing a person, which means we can recognize them in a roomful of others; it does not means we understand them and can predict their how they will respond to something. To understand something is to "relate to it" contextually, in terms of its relationships and be able to successfully predict an outcome, apply it, modify it, adapt it, and improve it.

Being smart and being wise are not the same things. Smart people know things; they have answers. Growing up everyone discovers answers to problems. The mistake is to think the first answer we find is the only or best answer. Wise people understand things; they focus on solving the problems and finding solutions, not answers. Wisdom comes from learning why, how and when to solve problems. Wise people discover that answers and solutions are not the same. Solutions are as unique as the problems.

Smart people, if they are not careful, will ultimately discover ignorance and incompetence; a lack of understanding the context and drawing on answers that are wrong. Smart people become wise by developing an open mindset and a willingness to consider more than what life has already taught them. While infants are born with the instinct to love and trust, they must learn things like hate. Learning to hate is shallow knowledge that can only be replaced by deep understanding. That is why the experience of traveling to a foreign land and being exposed to new ideas and cultures has such an impact and changes lives.

Wise people grow solutions through conflict and dissonance. Conflict and dissonance exist for a reason. They are indicators of potential shift in perspective, increase in understanding and elevation of insight or maturity. Conflict is what happens when everyone is “right”; it is commonly a disagreement between two opposing positions. Positions tend to reflect what we “want” in a solution or outcome. Interests tend to reflect what we “need” in a solution of outcome. Unfortunately, our needs often become clouded by our wants. Cognitive dissonance is an internal tension or clash resulting from the combination of two disharmonious ideas. It is a sign that a learning opportunity is before us.

What to do with the differences when everyone is right. Edward Witten, a famed physicist and professor at Princeton, was asked to provide assistance in breaking a log jam by resolving a conflict between five different models of String Theory. In the process, he observed that the five string theories could actually be mapped to one another. In 1995, Witten made the surprising suggestion that these five string theories were in fact not distinct theories, but different perspectives of a single theory which he called M-theory. Witten's announcement led to what is now known as the second superstring revolution.

The challenge for each and every one of you is to develop the skills to identify conflict and cognitive dissonance as the opportunity – to avoid ignorance and incompetence; to develop more of an open mindset; to move from knowing to understanding; to grow from smart to wise, and ultimately provide more solutions than answers. To follow in the example of Edward Witten, that takes a conflict, finds a breakthrough and start another revolution in thinking.