Wisdom Over Knowledge: Why You Should Make the Choice

One of the biggest time savers that we have in the world is the internet search engine.  It’s almost too easy to find information these days.  Did you ever the Encyclopedia Brtiannica?  When I was growing up, AOL and Yahoo dominated this market.  Today, it's Google.  In fact, today Google is considered a verb.  Has someone ever told you “just Google it!”.  It means just search for it on the internet.  

Google is a much larger company than just a search provider.   It owns YouTube and many other internet properties.  The parent company is called Alphabet and if you combine the two forms of alphabet stock, it would be the largest stock on the NASDAQ (National Associate of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) exchange. 

I could spend most of this blog entry talking about how good Google is at searching for things.  I can talk about the web and business services for me and my business.  I could also talk about the way it helps people connect with applications like Google Meet (a web conferencing software that's very similar to Zoom and GoToMeeting).  But the search engine is it’s primary service and a lot of people use it; and it's free! There are 3.5 billion searches per day and Google is very good at tracking internet based statistics (or analytics).  They have another free service called Google analytics that helps track website data.   It can help businesses and individuals track their web statistics with striking accuracy.  With that being said, you know that it's a foundation of their own business.

With such a powerful tool like an internet search engine, it's no wonder that Google is so popular.  But, what you may fail to see is that the knowledge that Google can provide us is not enough to thrive in this world.  What we really need, or what we need in addition to knowledge, is wisdom.  And you can't Google wisdom!  Well you can, but it will not have the same results as an experience.  

Wisdom is something that everyone wants but thinks you only get when you're really old.  This tells me that wisdom only comes with experience.  It requires emotional intelligence,  wherewithal, awareness of one's current situation, and the ability to compare and contrast variables. One who is wise can accurately detail the facets of relevant situations.  Knowledge, on the other hand, is related to facts, figures, truths, and happenings.  It does not necessarily help a process or provide necessary opinions to help a given situation.

When I was a young boy, I always found numbers to be very interesting.  I enjoyed, or maybe disliked less, math class than any of the other subjects in school.  I found it very interesting and multiplication and division fed my curiosity, which drove me to some unique ways of solving assigned problems.  There was a high likelihood that I would get an answer on a test right but be unable to show my work as we discussed during regular class time.  I’ve tried to explain this to my wife, a teacher, and much of her family (also educators) and I get the feeling that they understand what type of kid I was.  They've always been nice about it.  But, I'm not sure if they would have accepted my alternative methods for solving mathematical equations.

What a number! 10 X 10 = 100 (tenty)

I don’t have a lot of memories when I was a young boy, but one specific instance sticks out.  I couldn’t have been more than six years old.  My mother and I were counting together.  I don't know if it was for an assignment or if my mom was just trying to teach me something.  I learned a lot from my mom growing up, and this lesson was critical to my success in school and ultimately my career in the financial services industry.  We had counted from one all the way to ninety-nine.  I was proud of myself.  I was almost to triple digits.  I’m not sure if I knew the number after ninety-nine actually had three digits or if I even knew what the word digits was at that point.  But, I knew the next number. In my extreme excitement I yelled to my mother (I would never yell at my mother but I yelled to her), “I know Mommy.  It goes tenty-one, tenty-two, tenty-three!”.  She burst out laughing.  At the time, I didn't know why she was laughing.  But, I knew something was funny.  In her forever loving mother's voice, she told me that the next number is actually one hundred and that “tenty” does not come after ninety.  At that point, I was a little disappointed.  I was so confident and I knew that ten came after nine; and if thirty was after twenty and sixty was after fifty, surely “tenty” was after ninety.

I had the knowledge of all the single and double digit numbers (not counting fractions or decimals).  What I didn't know was that after the double digit numbers came one hundred.  At that age I never had a reason to count that high.  I never had a hundred of anything and I didn't have the experience of working with triple digit numbers.  Without experience I lacked wisdom.  I navigated the triple digit counting logically from my perspective.  But, my perspective was lacking.  I acknowledged that I could just be told that one hundred was next and that would represent knowledge.  However, if I understood how numbers worked I would have been able to deduce that “tenty” was not next in line.  I wouldn’t have known what to call it, but I would have recognized a change.  

A 6-year-old boy doesn't normally have the wisdom that his middle-aged mother does and he usually doesn't need much wisdom to survive in his world.  Thankfully, I turned out okay; maybe not great, but I survived this long and I know how to count to 100, and even beyond, ever since that day.

The lesson of “tenty” will always stick with me.  I often think of that time and it reminds me not to make assumptions.  It also reminds me that you can't expect a pattern to continue forever. Things are going to change in the world.  Rules will become outdated.  People will switch their allegiance.  Expectations will not be fulfilled.  But our calling to use our gifts and talents to make the world a better place will always exist.  It’s a strong force.  Unstoppable, to be frank.

We cannot consistently rely on our knowledge to carry us within the world of impact.  We must relentlessly pursue additional experiences.  It is through those experiences that we will keep our wisdom fresh.  It’s something that must be exercised.  It must be kept in great shape.  Knowledge, on the other hand, and especially if you're a good note-taker (whether digital, written, or holographic as we move it to the next wave of technology), will always be with us.  In keeping with the educational theme, another shortcoming of mine when I was younger was my lack of performance in history class.  While I cannot criticize anyone who is interested in history, whether recreationally or professionally, I know that well-documented history will never be forgotten.

You will need to stimulate your brain in your area of expertise and impact to keep your wisdom fresh.   A good salesman often has the opportunity to take on a management role.  A good manager knows the life of his or salespeople.  Therefore, that good manager must keep his or her skills and wisdom fresh.  He or she must keep up with trends, ideas, tactics, strategies, and all the other things that a great sales team implements.  If you are a wise impactmaker, you will make sure that as your movement or project grows and you take on new rolls, that you never forget what it's like to be on the front lines of your cause.  See E-Impact 38, Well Done Good and Faithful Servant, for the story about the executive director of a food bank that was working on his hands and knees to accomplish the organization’s mission.

I find the best leaders stay close to their cause while also managing details well.  They connect their work as a leader, which is different than that of their staff, with the base function of their organization.  They are not making critical decisions about budgets, employment, benefits, and services because they have to or because they are necessary evils.  They do it because they help the organization be better at executing its mission.  It’s certainly not for the paycheck.  If they get to the point where they’ve lost the passion for the mission, it may be time to move on or engage better with the team.

The best way to keep yourself engaged with your team is to ask them how you can be of assistance.  This is different than assigning a task.  In fact, it's so different that depending how far removed from the task you are you may not truly understand what you're actually assigning.  So, ask them how they can you help them carry out the task that you know needs to be completed.  Don’t let them off the hook by allowing them to say “Don't worry about it boss.  We got it.”  They may be able to handle it by themselves.  But if that's the case, tell them to show you.  Tell them to teach you; not as a test, but as a lesson for you.  I found that the more effective a team is at completing certain tasks the less the leader knows about said tasks because they have no need to. Their team is great at executing them.  What happens when something changes? What happens when a protocol is no longer affected?  That's when they need leadership.  That's when the manager earns his or her keep and shows their leadership more than their management skills.  You will be more effective in that scenario if you understand how the task was completed originally.  

Do less deciding and more experiencing and you'll always feel well-connected to your cause.

Your knowledge is valuable, but  may your wisdom be “tenty” or one hundred percent fed.