Take advantage of your lack of knowledge

This article first appeared on March 5th, 2012.

Playing dumb can be a wonderful weapon and there are plenty of different ways to use it.

The first is to use your lack of knowledge to delegate. There are some tasks Old Taskmaster has purposefully not learned how to do because I know they will be painful. Creating spreadsheets is a great example of this. I could probably figure out Excel if I wanted to, but I’d end up spending hours of my time ferreting around graphs and macros and God knows what else. Not the best use of my time.

Another great way to use your lack of knowledge is to engage employees. Go to your staff members and get them to talk you through the big project they have been working on. Tell them you haven’t really been across it and would like a briefing. You’ll get the lowdown on the task they are attacking and some good insights into how they work.

I also love to play on my lack of knowledge of technology to keep up with trends. Usually I go to someone in IT, or a young person in our team, and profess my total ignorance in the use of a particular device (this is something I don’t have to fake). Within a few minutes I’ve boned up on the latest tech trends and got my phone working again!

Get it done – today!