Author Name: Liz Wiseman

When is not knowing more valuable than knowing?

Why are you often at your best when you're new to a project, or performing something for the first time?

I've often asked myself these questions. When I was 24, just a year after graduating from business school, I was thrust into a management role, more by circumstance than ability. I was working at Oracle, then a unique software startup that was doubling in size every year. After a year of teaching new employees Oracle software, I was put in charge of company-wide training and tasked with establishing a new company university—a job I knew absolutely nothing about. The job seemed far beyond my capabilities, yet it was unwise to begin my career by turning down a promotion.

I went into the business without a comprehensive vision and without the slightest idea of ​​how to establish a corporate university, except for a few brief directions from my superiors. But I understood that my mission was crucial to the company's future. If our sales team and field consultants didn't fully understand our new product, it could doom the startup. So, it was crucial that I knew how to do it right. My ignorance, coupled with the stark reality that my job was directly linked to the company's future, drove me to talk to everyone and everyone I could to fill this knowledge gap. My ignorance was a humility born of desperation.

My team was made up of recent graduates, who were also new to corporate education. We all lacked experience, but we were eager to make a difference. We worked together, seeking out conversations and interviews with product leaders and senior field managers, trying to understand what information to teach, to whom, and when. With few resources and a very tight schedule, we kept our model simple: the university wanted to pool existing expertise and available resources, then create a learning environment where technical knowledge could be transferred to those working with customers.