Knowledge, Wisdom and Skill

“To gain knowledge add something every day. To gain wisdom subtract something every day.”

- Lao Tsu

In Leadership: A Warriors Art, Christopher Kolenda identifies competence and character as the key components in a leader.

Character can be defined as a combination of intent, courage and grit.

Intent is “why” you are doing something. The why matters.

Courage is action in the face of danger.

Grit is taking another step when you’re worn out and the finish line is nowhere in sight.

A way of defining “competence” or talent is: knowledge, wisdom and skill.

Defining a thought or concept with specific terms can be a productive step toward improvement.

Knowledge, wisdom and skill are all different things which are all learned differently.

Time is limited. Attention, the amount of information which is top of mind, is limited.

To accelerate learning, to learn more in a shorter period of time, it helps to define the different areas where you can spend time learning and to define what part of your talent stack you’re trying to improve.

Knowledge can be defined as an understanding of how information links together.

Wisdom can be defined as an understanding of context and nuance, an understanding of what knowledge is appropriate to the situation.

Skill can be defined as an ability to link information to action to outcome. It’s an ability to recognize the appropriate information, execute the appropriate actions and generate a desired outcome.

Knowledge is different than wisdom.

Wisdom is different than skill.

Two “secrets” of accelerated learning are prioritizing and organizing.

Prioritizing relates to attention (what signals you are looking for), effort (what actions you are taking) and outcomes (what you are seeking to change).

Selecting a different outcome to focus on can often be more productive than getting bogged down on a discussion of specific actions.

Organizing beliefs is a process of developing a structure for plugging new information into.

Understanding the differences between knowledge, wisdom and skill helps prioritize effort for learning. Knowledge, wisdom and skill are all important for different reasons.

Application is ridiculously useful for finding gaps in knowledge and wisdom. It can often seem like you understand a subject until you try and apply knowledge.

Theory is knowledge. Application is skill. Wisdom lies in between.

There are those who can’t do but can teach, they have wisdom but don’t have skill. They know what information is important in a given context but can’t physically link information to action within a relevant time frame.

There are those who can do but can’t explain how they do what they do. They have skill but aren’t aware of or can’t articulate their wisdom. They have a hard time teaching.

Subtraction is a good way to move from knowledge to wisdom. A decision is literally cutting away other options.

“Taking something away”, the process of actively choosing which variables to discount, provides insight into the importance of the variables and helps develop wisdom.

Wisdom is an understanding of what information is important and what information is a distraction in a very specific context.

In his book Blink, Malcom Gladwell describes a 1996 study done at Cook County hospital in Chicago.

The trauma center at Cook County hospital was the inspiration for the ‘90’s TV show ER.

The challenge at the hospital was. evaluating thousands of patients each year who were complaining of chest pains.

At Cook County Hospital there simply weren’t enough beds to handle the demands. They needed a better way of quickly making life and death decisions.

What they found from their study was that what you paid attention to mattered and that too much information can often make decisions worse.

They found that focusing on the results of an Electro-Cardio Gram (ECG) and just three risk factors (fluctuating chest pain, fluid in the lungs and blood pressure) improved diagnosis by 70 percent.

The doctors had access to a lot more information about lifestyle, health history and many other variables but adding the extra information made their decisions worse, not better.

It took time, effort and careful study to identify those three critical factors but after the effort was put in to identify the critical underlying factors, performance, measured by accurate diagnosis, increased dramatically.

Practice is the best way to develop skill. Knowledge and wisdom help accelerate skill development because they enable you to prioritize what signals to look for, what actions to practice and what outcomes to seek.

Knowledge is an understanding of how information links together.

Wisdom is an understanding of context and nuance, an understanding of what knowledge is appropriate to the situation.

Skill is an ability to link information to action to outcome.

Talent = Knowledge + Wisdom + Skill