I’ve been struggling with a lot of the “stuff” I see in my feeds. And, from time to time, conversations I have. And reflections on the “state of selling/business.”
As I’ve been reflecting on it, I’ve asked a couple of close friends/colleagues. Are they seeing similar things? How would they describe it? The descriptions were all over the place. Terms like “Idiots, Such Stupidity, Anti-intellectual…..” I get what they are saying, but they weren’t quite capturing the behaviors I am trying to describe.
For the time being, I’ve categorized so many of the behaviors in three ways:
- Unsmart
- Stupid
- Willfully ignorant
For the moment, rather than defining them, let me give some examples:
For Unsmart, I saw a posting in LI today. It was from the Director of Revenue Operations, he posted, “I’m looking for an excellent sales trainer. Someone who’s trained in a sales methodology that could come in and do some sessions with our sales team. It can be any methodology, they just need to be great at training.”
I’m sure he knew better. I suspect he was under the gun for a SKO, panicking and tossed something out onto the feeds. If he had even taken the time to re-read his posting, or think about it, he would have deleted it, or provided a better thought out request. Maybe focusing on a methodology that was aligned with the challenges the org faced, consistent with their sales process. They may have wanted to do something focusing more on engaging with insight, or another focused more on value based selling, or…. Or rather than methodology, he may have wanted to focus on certain skills. He probably would have been more specific on something that would have a great impact on the selling team.
All of us do Unsmart things. I can’t begin to count the number of things I’ve said, that, as I said them, I wish I could take them back. Often, we are reacting to something, often, we are filling gaps, often we just haven’t taken 30-60 seconds to think about what we are saying and what we intend to say. Sometimes, I suspect, we do Unsmart things just to hear the sounds of our own voices.
Since I’m prone to being Unsmart; as I’m about to do some sort of knee jerk reaction, I count to 10 and think, “Is this really what I want to say? Should I say it now? Should I pause and think a few minutes?” Sometimes, when writing, I’ll save it in a folder, before publishing, sit on it a day, then come back to it with a fresh mind.
For Stupid, a conversation my brother and law had a couple of days ago. Actually it was an argument, we were arguing about the Superbowl. Neither of us know anything about the teams and competition. I haven’t seen a single game this season, nor have I read anything other than a headline. I was arguing for the Eagles–I used to live outside Philadelphia and I get a kick out of the fans after game rituals of climbing greased poles. Plus I had heard the refs tend to be biased to the Chiefs QB, Travis Kelce—I mean Patrick Mahomes. By brother in law was arguing for the Chiefs, but I think he has a thing for Taylor Swift.
We were being Stupid. We were arguing about something we had absolutely no knowledge of (as demonstrated by my description). But that didn’t stop us. In this case, we knew we were being stupid and what we were having fun in front of the friends observing the argument.
But here’s another example, and it’s more painful, but the variations, too common. I was asked by a VC to have a conversation with the team of one of their new seed round companies. The VC wanted me to help them think about their launch and GTM strategy. We started the conversation with loose discussion about them, their markets, ambitions. We started to talk about the GTM strategy. I asked, “What are the things most important to you, right now, about your GTM Strategy?” They assertively responded, “We have only two issues we need to talk about! What CRM should we use? How many SDRs should we hire?” Clearly, they didn’t know anything about developing a GTM strategy. They had some impressions, but they didn’t know what they didn’t know. We paused, I went through, “Here’s what we are trying to achieve, here are some of the issues that a GTM strategy should consider…..” After resetting the discussion, we were able to start making progress on the strategy.
They were not stupid people but what they were doing was Stupid. They had absolutely no knowledge about GTM strategies, none had ever been involved in launching a company or product, they didn’t know what they didn’t know.
We all have areas in which we may be Stupid. The important thing is to recognize that we may be talking about something that we know nothing about. Or that we don’t know what we don’t know, and to go into rapid learning mode. If we don’t proactively look to learn, we then move into the next category.
Now let’s address Willful Ignorance. Willful Ignorance can be devastating–usually less to the willfully ignorant, but more to those on whom they inflict their willful ignorance. And, in these times, Willful Ignorance seems to be growing.
Let me give you an example of Willful Ignorance. A week or so ago, a sales leader, GTM guru was providing the secret to sales success. The entire secret to sales success is about efficiency, and with AI, hyperefficiency. I made some comments around effectiveness, “Wouldn’t it be better to first focus on effectiveness, to make sure we are doing the right things in the right way, then focus on efficiency?” He continued suggesting it is only about hyperefficiency. He finally said, “Equating seller’s performance to their actual quality of work leaves a lot out of the picture.” I tried to continue the discussion to open his thinking. Efficiency is important, but….. But he had a very specific agenda and something to sell. Even worse, he later deleted much of our conversation, it was a distraction to what he was trying to accomplish.
You might say this was Stupidity. But it wasn’t, if you looked at some other things this guru had done, he showed he recognized the importance of effectiveness, he commented on other post talking about effectiveness. But in this post he had a specific agenda, something to sell and in the intensity of his focus, he was being Willfully Ignorant.
Sadly, so much of what we see in our selling and business worlds (perhaps in society) is Willful Ignorance. People who know better, but are aggressively unwilling to change. They ignore data and facts. They will not listen to other arguments/approaches. They aggressively ignore other points of view. They may invent or carefully curate facts that support their point of view.
Why do they do this? Often fear, fear of change or other fears. Often, a feeling of being threatened and they have to defend themselves. Sometimes not wanting to admit they may have been wrong. Sometimes, though I hope rarely, it’s malicious.
Sometimes, in helping develop their own feelings of security, they enlist others with the same Willful Ignorance. They seek strength in the group, developing a Community of Willful Ignorance.
And sometimes, we become Willfully Ignorant when we encounter those who are Willfully Ignorant, but with a differing position. We become stuck in our POV, without considering others.
At times, each of us has probably been Unsmart, Stupid, Willfully Ignorant. Unsmartness is easily fixable, it’s really about paying attention. Stupidity is easily fixable, only if we recognize that we may be encountering something we know nothing about, proactively seeking to learn.
But I have yet to figure out how to correct Willful Ignorance. The Willfully Ignorant seem un-receptive to change. And it terrifies me.
In our worlds of selling and business, there is so much opportunity if we constantly seek to learn, grow, experiment, improve, change. In our society, we have the same opportunity. It’s not about who’s right and who’s wrong, but how we learn, grow and achieve together.
But, in these musings, I may be displaying my Stupidity. I don’t believe I am being Willfully ignorant. But in either case, call me on it, help me learn and think differently.
Afterword: Thanks to Charlie Green and Andy Paul for helping me think about this issue.
Afterword: Here’s the AI generated discussion of this post. I discovered a lot about AI in listening to this discussion. Reflecting back on this article, I realize what we are currently seeing in AI is often Stupid. These tools assemble words, based on tokens, on something of which they know nothing about. And it doesn’t recognize it is Stupid. And we sometimes miss this, the responses we get “sound smart,” but they are actually Stupid, stumbling on truth accidentally.
There is so much wrong in this discussion, but it actually vividly illustrates much of what I am trying to discuss in this article.
The one redeeming thing is, at least for the present, these tools have no reasoning capability. So it cannot be Willfully Ignorant.
If only for the irony and subtle comedy, enjoy this discussion.
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