It occurred to me today that the worst thing you can do to someone starting out is to sit down and “tell them like it is.” Take, for example, a new salesperson coming into a company. Your temptation might be to tell them the reality of the situation and what is and is not working. What they should try and what they should steer clear of. I am guilty of this. I got burned once following a certain path, so my natural instinct is to tell the new people not to follow that path. However, here in lies the folly. Your experience is never representative. Let me repeat: your personal and individual experience is never conclusive proof of a particular outcome.
Imagine someone at SpaceX telling engineers to forget the notion of using methane as a fuel source because that was tried before and was proven not to work. Because the culture of this company is clearly challenging these types of notions, they are getting closer and closer to having rapidly reusable rockets that will drive costs down incredibly. If this is the case in rocket science, then it certainly is the case in sales. Just think of the audacity of someone trying to stake the claim, “That will not work,” when all they have to back that up is their own individual experience. If a scientist at SpaceX is given permission to try things that decades of rocket scientists have proven will not work, then we certainly should ponder giving people the right to try things that we have only proven wrong once.
One of my favorite lines from the 1999 movie The Matrix is when Cypher is closing a deal with Agent Smith. “After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is Bliss.” This is a borrowed concept from a famous poem written in an older style of English in 1792 by Thomas Gray. He is a rather famous poet who attended Eton College. His poem, titled “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College,” reflects this interesting passage as he reflects on happy young people going on with their lives despite the struggles in the world around them:
Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
‘Tis folly to be wise.
A full version of this famous poem can be found here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44301/ode-on-a-distant-prospect-of-eton-college
Those of us who are wise are always too quick to point out to the foolish the potential danger they are about to walk into. We think this will help them avoid the mistakes that we did. However, ponder this: perhaps learning from these mistakes is necessary, or perhaps they will not make the mistake that you did, and they will discover or find something that you did not. You think that you are helping progress, but you could be hindering it. Look back at our new salesperson example. A salesperson comes to you with stars in their eyes and proclaims with passion and excitement that they are going to pursue this large company. You roll your eyes, “Everyone has tried that, so do not waste your time.” Yet the salesperson ignores you, tries anyway, succeeds, and is now representing the company’s largest customer. I have seen this play out too many times to ignore the fact that sometimes the person with more, yet limited, experience is wrong to stop the inexperienced from trying anyway.
I like the classic children’s story from Norton Juster in 1961. He writes about a young boy named Milo. He is always bored and finds everything to be a waste of time. One day, he discovers a mysterious toll booth in his room with a map and a book of rules. He finds out that he can travel to a fantastic world and then has many adventures. In one of the adventures, Milo meets a Mathemagician in a world where numbers are significant. The quote is as follows and is a reflection of the number of possibilities:
“So many things are possible just as long as you don’t know they’re impossible.”
My wife and I were having a conversation a few months back. Our kids are now on the Speech and Debate team in college. This is where my wife and I met in college and were on a similar team. We were reflecting on how amazing our minds worked back then. We could tackle these incredible topics that we knew so little about and then argue about them in an impromptu forum. What changed? Sure, we got older, but you would think that with all of our experience now we would be better at this. However, we realized that we just could not get ready for and head out to a debate tournament and compete at this level in our current state. We came to the conclusion that we just simply “know too much.” We have more fear now, more trepidation. We understand how erroneous our assumptions are. We see the many sides of an issue, and that can sometimes be paralyzing. We are no longer blissfully ignorant; we are now very much aware of our ignorance, and that creates a roadblock.
As I watch my children become adults, I see them discovering similar things that I did. I try to resist the temptation to tell them the way it is because, honestly, I may not have it right after all. So perhaps, we should consider when giving out our unsolicited advice that perhaps ignorance really is bliss. We just might be disrupting the next great salesperson, rocket scientist, or poet.
Again, fascinating topic, Guy….