I am reading "Great by Choice" by Jim Collins ("Good to Great") and Morten T. Hansen ("Collaboration"), and came across a sentence on page 111 that made me stop and think:
"The primary difficulty lies not in answering the question but in having the presence of mind to ask the question."
I think this is often the case. I know that, in my own participation in the CPSM Listserve hosted by SMPS, I often respond to a post by phone rather than by email, thinking that I only want to share my knowledge on that particular issue with the person who was smart enough to ask the question.
Indeed, some of my best professional relationships were started that way -- with me making a phone call instead of sending an email, having a conversation that often lasted 20-30 minutes and included other related subjects of concern to either or both of us.
When the shoe is on the other foot, when I'm the one seeking information, I have also taken to heart something my mother used to tell me all the time. She would say:
"You'll never know until you open your big mouth and ask someone, so find the right person, open your big mouth and ask!"
And she was right. But sometimes you have to ask a few wrong people before you find the right person.
Over the years, I have learned to have great respect for any person who is confident enough to ask a question to obtain information. I have similarly great respect for any person who can admit to not knowing the answer to my question, rather than giving me the run-around with a quick but incorrect answer. Some of these "runners" had egos that just wouldn't allow them to say "I don't know;" others were afraid they might lose their job, authority or credibility if they admitted to a gap in their knowledge.
When I would think back at some of the amazing wrong answers I have received over the years, many from folks who were very earnest about their answers, who absolutely believed that their clearly inaccurate information must be correct, I used to shake my head and wonder, "what were they thinking?"
I have since learned that this is the wrong question. Instead of "what were they thinking?" I should drop the first word and simply ask "were they thinking?"
The answer to that question is frequently "NO!"
So I have tried to cultivate the habit of figuring out who is ASKING the questions, and then sitting by them, developing business or personal relationships with them, and learning what I could by listening to the answers they got and their reactions to those answers. Further conversations with these folks then helped me to learn even more, to catalog the new information in my brain for integration with other knowledge and retrieval when I needed it, and to help further build and strengthen these relationships.
I also learned to have the courage to ask the questions myself, and to distinguish when I was being given real and useful information as opposed to just a stream of noise with no value at all.
"Capitol Cow"
(Austin downtown art-cow collection)