Striving for Unconscious Competence

Whilst working as an Entrepreneur in Residence I’d report to Dido Harding (CEO of Talk Talk Group Plc) on the progress made on my research projects. During these times she taught me a valuable lesson about self development.

Like Charles (the Chairman of Talk Talk who I wrote a previous post about) she’s extremely approachable, humble and likeable. Besides being incredibly sharp as you’d expect from a CEO she manages to infuse this serious side with a great sense of humour. I was often laughing when spending time with her. Although, Dido will admit she’s not an entrepreneur she can definitely teach you a an ample amount about running a business.

She asked me how things had been. With my cup of tea in hand I started by telling her that this last week was the first time I realised I knew more than I did three months ago. Amused she said that was a good sign. I however, wasn’t being flippant. Last week was a revelation. Visiting a third party provider they unnervingly started taking notes when I was speaking on a topic I was there to get their expert opinion on.

Admittedly, the last three months seemed like a complete waste of time because there appeared to be no tangible benefit to the 1000 plus hours (ten plus hours a day) spent talking to people in the business/learning definitions/reading old internal reports/reading articles/listening to podcasts/viewing videos and note taking on everything and anything technology related.

Being inquisitive by nature meant building a knowledge base of internal business knowledge, useful websites, new start-ups, entrepreneurship, frameworks and trends whether it was directly or indirectly related to what I had been asked to do. As time passed spotting start-ups early on before they were in the press, connecting ideas and coming up with my own conclusions supporting them became second nature. Finally plucking up the courage to present my personal opinions on different technology trends confidently to senior management and being thrilled they wanted to hear my views.

As I explained or discussed concepts Dido never once interrupted. She listened patiently and intently. My favourite Dido trait is that when she does challenge ideas it’s with encouragement providing constructive viewpoints or names of people that might be able to assist and without making you feel inadequate which I admire her greatly for. It’s stood me in good stead when meeting entrepreneurs on a daily basis. There’s nothing more annoying than being patronised. She respected that I was able to counter argue some of her challenges with supporting evidence and innovative ideas. When I’d finished she looked at me and smiled.

She said the first day I entered her office and actually when any individual enters a new job or role (especially graduates) they are unwittingly in a state of “unconscious incompetence” basically “not knowing what they don’t know”. Eventually, they move at varying speeds through the four stages of learning illustrated below(from Maslow who gave us his famous hierarchy of needs). She said she was delighted that I had come such a long way since that first day.

I truly believe with hard work, perseverance and the faith of the business you work in self development is inevitable.

Unconscious Competence.