Sometimes I don't see the big picture...

> Aw, Jeez!

> In case I don't say it, thanks for a GREAT
> post!

> I was also a soldier.

> No, I had no chance to go to war and defend
> my country. But I DID work for a large
> corporation that has grown even larger since
> I left. I was a corporate soldier.

> My job was long range planning for
> information systems.

> Now, that company promoted from within, and
> it kind of didn't matter whether you knew
> what you were about or not. They had
> "training" programs that would
> equip you to be whatever they needed.

> (accept that automation was new, computers
> were these esoteric "thingys" that
> somebody surely knew about - your report
> showed up magically every month - and
> somebody realized that things were changing
> faster than the company was keeping up with
> them, ok?)

> So here comes me. Long Range Planning. Find
> out what "they" are going to need,
> in time to give "us" a chance to
> be ready to provide it.

> [Comes now, the major flaw in the premise
> that nobody cared about.]

> "We (latter half of the sentence)
> didn't really give a rat's behind about what
> they (former part) needed. But more than
> that, we all knew what "they"
> needed, and "they'd" know it too,
> if they weren't so dumb!

> Five years. I learned a lot. I'm dumb enough
> to understand that no matter what I know,
> there's more to BE known. So I checked out
> books, bought books, talked with people on
> the internet (actually, in newsgroups) and
> anybody else I could find to try to grasp
> what was required in my position.

Marye,

Interesting info there and thanks for the kind words.

Pretty important point about "no matter what you know there is always more to know". That type of thinking is very-much honored in the corporate but as I get older and spend more time as a self-employed person I've grown weary of learning. Why? I (like many visiting this board) seem to spend nearly every waking hour accumulating information. We accumulate more information in a week than what people in 1900 did over a course of many months...yet we are far less satisfied with our lives...we are far more prone to unhappiness. We seem to accomplish much less than we think we should. The reason for all this is because we spend most of our time accumulating information and very little of it putting that information to work. We 'do' so much (or so we tell our family...our friends...and even ourselves (pure b.s.)) yet we accomplish so little. There are exceptions to this rule as there are every rule but for the most part I feel it is true. And to make it worse most of the information we accumulate is useless...it is useless now, it will be useless five years from now and it will be useless 50 years from now. The 80/20 principle works quite nicely here but it is more like 90-something percent of the info we collect will not benefit us or our friends or family or anyone else for that matter. Sure we may be able to answer some questions that show up on Jeopardy once in a while but how is that really benefitting us?

I feel a more important skill is the ability to 'see' patterns. Especially from an entrepreneurial slant. If I can spot repeating patterns of opportunity that will benefit me far more than accumulating knowledge...especially if I know where and whom to ask to get information if by chance I need it.

Think of it as a child's teeter-totter, with the accumulation of knowledge on one end and the actual application of that knowledge on the other. Guess what happens? The 'knowledge' end becomes so heavy that no amount of application in the world will balance things out. Not that we spend much time applying our knowledge anyway. It is far easier and less painful to accumlate knowledge than it is to apply it.

Peole do not fail in business because of a 'lack of knowledge'...they fail (again there are exceptions) because they fail to implement what they have learned or have failed to spot 'patterns' relevent to their business. Remember, accumulating knowledge and 'thinking' are not the same thing. You can spend all day learning but not one second of that day really thinking about what you have learned. "Learning" is an action...and action drives out thought. We can much more readiliy spot trends and patterns if we spend time thinking about previous trends and patterns. And yes I'll admit it right here:

I'm Mike Winicki and I'm a...

Infoholic.

Hopefully I can find the strength to quit learning so much and apply more of what I have learned.

Take care,

Mike Winicki