Before we start let’s get on the same page w.r.t. some concepts:
- Knowledge: Awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation.
Knowledgeable people have a great sense of understanding about the problem and have an organized way to tackle it. - Discipline: The practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior, using punishment to correct disobedience.
Disciplined people have great team organization skills and have flexibility to re-organize and thus tackle complex and often seemingly unknown problems. - Talent: Natural aptitude or skill.
Talented people have ways and capabilities to learn new things (including people skills like communication, team organization, and coordination). They are one of the most extraordinary people in society and their contribution are simply ineffable.
Let me start with a story:
Imagine a task of building a railway engine given to 2 sets of people —
1st group — A bunch of knowledgable people knowing all the technicalities of building an engine.
2nd group — A bunch of motivated and well-trained people who knows “How to accomplish”
I have kept talented people out of this competition to show a more clear distinction about some behavior differences between the two unique behaviors we encounter in our day to day life.
The task of building a railway engine requires knowledge of multiple concepts and coordination of a bunch of people. It requires research, plan of actions, coordination with raw material suppliers, day to day progress management, cost management, long term maintenance plan, and the list goes on.
In my understanding, 2nd group will be able to deliver and iteratively improve on the quality of the engine. Here are some shortcomings that I’ve seen with knowledgable people that would restrict them to meet/exceed our expectations in performing this task:
- Narrowed visibility — Usually knowledgable people have a very scoped way of executing things that make them vulnerable with ever-evolving ways of doing the same thing.
- Newton’s 1st law of working principle — Knowledgeable people are often reluctant to explore different areas and some times, this causes a concentration of information on specific field. Unless you’re in an environment demanding diving deep into a specific field, having such a level of information is usually not very helpful.
Also, when they start working on something, they easily lose track of time and try to perfect the solution from the first go. This might some times be required but more often this leads to substantial delays. - Blind faith in their solutions — Very knowledgable people are not the best team players out there. Their blind faith in their way of working makes it difficult for the other members of the team. The team thereby ends up in either of the following situations —
- align themselves to his/her understanding,
- challenge his/her thoughts and loose their full support and coordination in the future, OR
- lose his/her support altogether. - Craving to solve only challenging problems — Knowledge does come with a craving for solving more and more challenging problems (usually in the area of expertise). This craving usually takes a toll on team morale, where because of a few individuals, a clear rift is created within the team. It greatly affects the team’s productivity and workload distribution.
I could only achieve success in my life through self-discipline, and I applied it until my wish and my will became one.
— Nikola Tesla
I don’t want you to draw any conclusion from this because whatever I have explained is only possible in extreme situations. Although, I want you to understand some of the difficulties that the team faces because of such behavior. In case, you can relate to any of the behaviors mentioned above, consider changing it and I am sure not only you, but the whole team would benefit from it.
