KNOWING AND BEYOND MERELY KNOWING

At a Business Lunch this week, prior to the presentation, I went back to the book table and the event sponsor introduced me as the author of the books to a highly influential CEO. As he was looking over the Meta-Coach Series of books, I asked him what he was interested in. He said that the term “self-Actualization” had caught his attention and that’s why he was there. He flipped through Self-Actualization Psychology and Unleashed and then started to look at Achieving Peak Performance. That’s when I asked, “So, what do you think?”

“Oh, I know all of this stuff.” “Really? That’s great and surprising because while I authored it, I’m still learning heaps every day about it and feel that I only know a small portion of what’s in these books.”

“No ... [pause] ... that’s impossible. How can that be?” “Well, that’s because there is knowing, and then there is knowing about knowing and then knowing in your body and well, many levels and dimensions of knowing.”

Well, that hooked him and off we went on a pretty intense conversation for the next five minutes. Part of what I shared with him are the following seven distinctions about “knowing.” Here’s to your knowing, to your knowing about your knowing (your meta-knowing) and your knowing holistically in every dimension.

As you know we now live in “the information age.” We entered into that age sometime in the mid-twentieth century. Since then information has been increasing at exponential rates and continues to. With the world-wide web, information has exploded via the internet. Information is not only growing at incredible rates, the inter-change of information is taking it levels previously unimagined. Now what once would have taken weeks or even months of study and research to find now takes moments at a keyboard and Google or other search engines.

Yet information isn’t our biggest need, more than that we need knowledge. Nor is that our biggest need, more than that we need wisdom. A dictionary is full of information, has very little knowledge, and absolutely no wisdom at all. “Knowledge” arises from the way we put information together and use it. Knowledge emerges from the structures that form and mold the data so that we can now “know” something in a given domain.

Actually, in terms of getting things done, in terms of taking effective action, in terms of using data for improving performance or moving it to the level of experience, information itself is often the problem. Information itself can become a significant contributing problem to getting things done. How often do we may think that the solution to our problems, to releasing our current

potential, to experiencing more effectiveness, is more information. Another book. Another training.

The actual problem may be information incompetence. That’s because knowing more without knowing what to do with that information leaves you helpless. At that point, you are only one step beyond ignorance. Actually this is a form of information incompetence. Knowing more without the ability to translate that knowledge into action leaves you knowing-what, but not knowing-how. And that can actually create confusion in you. Confusion, after all, refers to the fusing together (“con”) of things that need to be distinguished. You “know” something and confuse the knowing of some particular what with the practical knowledge of how to implement and how to execute.

If there is such a thing as information incompetence, then is there an opposite? What is it? Is it possible to develop information competence? Is it possible to expand your “knowing” to other dimensions to make it more holistic? How do you develop that? What does that involve?

1) Distinctions of Relevance This is the awareness of what information is needed and relevant. With anything and everything there’s lots of information that is simply irrelevant. There is information that doesn’t make any difference and that only clutters up your desk and your mind. In the area that you’re working with, what distinction/s do you need to order and structure the information? What patterns and categories will help classify the information? What is relevant? How do you know? What criteria are you using to make that determination?

2) Accuracy This refers to the quality of the information that you experience and it comes in many different degrees. Is the information accurate? How accurate? How distorted? Distorted in what way and to what degree? How much accuracy do you need? How much looseness of information can you tolerate? Since information like other things is always changing, how current is your information? What is new or different with the information that you’re using and relying upon?

3) Contexts Context refers to the environments and places where you will use the information. Information is relevant and accurate according to various contexts. In what context do you need information? What information do you need in that context? For what purpose?

4) Know-how knowledge Some information is about content, other is about practice and application. Know-how knowledge is information regarding how-to apply the information to a specific situation and in a specific application. What know-how information do you need? How much of that know-how knowledge do you already have? What strategy do you already know? What information is missing that you need? What know-how knowledge would you like

to have that would make a transformative difference?

5) Embodiment We usually call the information that’s we have in our head “intellectual” knowledge. It is the know-about information that we learn academically. When you develop the ability to translate what you know in your mind into muscle memory, you close the knowing-doing gap. You then transform the information into intuitive knowledge so that you know it in your neuro-pathways and can perform the knowledge. Now your body “knows.”

6) Implementation Once you translate information into your muscles for muscle memory, now you have the ability to apply that information. You can now execute what you know and close the knowing-doing gap by taking appropriate and effective action. You now actualize the information in your everyday actions.

7) Monitoring Implementation is not the end of the story. The next step is to monitor the information that you have applied to see how well it works out. Is the information effectively translated into action? How well? What’s missing? How are you monitoring it? What feedback mechanisms are in place to hold you accountable for the effective actions? When do you check it out? How often? With such monitoring, you can then continually refine and hone the information, keep revising it, and develop a continuous improvement loop or kaizen.

Since all of this refers to a core capacity—that of information competence, then how competent are you in turning information into knowledge and perhaps even wisdom? How skilled are you with taking the information that comes your way via television, radio, internet, books, magazines, conversations, and so on and competently use, apply, embody, implement and monitor that information? How much more would you like to be? For translating mind into muscle, meaning into performance, check out the newest book in the Meta-Coach series, Achieving Peak Performance ($25 plus shipping).