You Are Not Dumb. You Just Don't Know.

Each of us has a tendency to think everyone is just like us. To one degree or another, you probably think "everyone" experiences everything from the Web to the weather the same way that you do. I sure do. My own experience is the only frame of reference I have. But it rocked me the last couple of weeks when a couple of people apologized to me for not knowing something about Dreamweaver or HTML or CSS. Why would anyone feel the need to apologize for not knowing something? Needing training is not a character flaw. Especially something that is not intuitive.

That first ape to use a leg bone as a tool may or may not have thought himself clever or innovative. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, as in so much of life, the discovery was a happy accident. But that doesn't mean the other apes were lazy. They were just happy with the way things were. They weren't bad monkeys because they didn't figure this out, first. And to his credit, the first ape shared his discovery with the rest of his shrewdness (the collective noun for "Apes" and how cool is that?) and in the next scene they are all fatter. That's the cool thing about sharing knowledge—and if you've ever met me, you know I have shared a lot of knowledge.

But there is a huge difference between picking up a bone and striking a happy meal with it and styling your scheduling table for readability and accessibility. Not knowing how doesn't make you a bad person. It may make you a bad Web designer, but it's no reason to apologize. Really, there is nothing intuitive about the way Dreamweaver works, or much of HTML either. Not knowing something isn't a character flaw.

I know several people who seem to not want training because they are afraid it will be seen as an admission that they don't know something. But if the program just shipped how can anyone expect a person to already somehow know how it all works? I was told two weeks ago of someone running into a person in a hallway who was on a cell phone call saying "Yeah, but I'm a supervisor, so I don't need to take the training". What's that about? Why wouldn't you want to know what your underlings were up to? Maybe there is an easier way to do something? Maybe they could be saving minutes or hours every time they do some common task now, but you'll never know because you haven't taken a simple class? By the way, one week ago this individual was in the training.

Now, this all works both ways, I'm afraid. People try to canonize me because I can get their form to work. All it means is that I have read one more page in the book. It's not about who is "smarter" or "better" at all. Maybe you know everything that is in Chapter 12 and I had need of whatever was in Chapter 14, so I skipped ahead. If I come to you for an answer and you come to me for an answer, who is "smarter" or "better" then? Hey, maybe I have only read one more page than you.

I have heard a lot reasons why people don't get or want training. Sure, it costs, but good training also pays. Yes, it takes time, but again, if you learn how to save a minute every time you do something and you do it sixty-one times, you're ahead of the game if you had an hour of training. You do have to get over to the classroom, but it's (usually) a nice walk and we all try to make the experience as pleasant as we can. But really, I don't want training because then people will think I didn't know? That isn't good. There is no shame in not knowing something you need to know. The shame comes in having knowledge of that situation and allowing it to continue.

Technology changes. Personnel change. Procedures change. Software and hardware change. We can take a moment in time and discover what is within those changes that will make things better, easier, faster tomorrow.

Come on, let's learn something today.