Be Proud When You’re the Dumbest Person in the Meeting Room
Celebrate and shout it from the rooftop (in your head).
Everybody was wearing a t-shirt with a tech company’s logo, except me. I wore a suit that day with no tie and didn’t get the memo.
I walked in a few minutes late which was unusual given my social media profile that promoted being ten minutes early to meetings. The agenda was a “cloud talk.” Otherwise known as tech talk. I was the least “cloudy” person in the room. The breadth of experience was astonishing. They should have left me off the invite as the dumbest person in the room by twenty marathon miles.
“So, what’s your view on our cloud strategy? Where does it need tweaking?”
At that moment, when you’re the dumbest person in the room, you have two options:
- Escape using the emergency exit of a fake incoming phone call.
- Sit there and be proud of your dumbness. See it as an achievement or even an opportunity.
I chose option two. It was a strategy that came from an Ex-Google employee. (I’ve forgotten his name but it doesn’t matter.)
In an interview four years ago, he explained that he got the opportunity at Google to be a senior leader by sitting in meeting rooms and being the…
