When You Know Better, Do Better
Have you ever looked back and realized how much differently you would handle something today than you did years ago?
That’s one of the gifts of experience. We make decisions based on what we know at the time, but experience gives us new information, new perspectives, and sometimes a very different understanding. The question is whether we’re willing to let what we’ve learned change what we do.
When our first son was born, I was determined to be the perfect parent.
Like many young adults, I could look back at the way I had been raised and identify all the things I was certain I would do differently. I was going to learn from my parents’ mistakes and make sure I didn’t repeat them.
Looking back now, there was more than a little ignorance and arrogance in that thinking.
My parents were fabulous parents who raised 11 children.
I was raising my first and somehow believed I had already figured out where they had gone wrong.
Then reality arrived.
Our son had that mysterious condition called colic. I’m still not sure anyone could adequately explain exactly what it was, but in our house it meant difficulty feeding and what seemed like almost constant crying for about six months.
As first-time parents, we were constantly stressed.
We didn’t have the benefit of experience to tell us what was normal, what wasn’t, what would work, or even whether we were part of the problem or part of the solution.
We were learning as we went.
And we made mistakes.
By the time our fifth child arrived, we were very different parents.
It wasn’t because we had finally figured out how to be perfect parents.
We had learned there was no such thing.
We had simply accumulated experience. We had encountered problems. We had made mistakes. We had learned what worked and what didn’t. We worried less about some things and paid more attention to others.
Most importantly, we changed as we learned.
We became more competent and confident because we were willing to adapt.
One of the benefits of experience is discovering how much you didn’t know when you thought you knew everything.
Leadership follows much the same evolutionary path.
Experience only makes us better if we’re willing to allow what we learn to change what we do.
When I first entered the corporate world, personal computers weren’t part of our everyday working lives. Neither were mobile phones. Today, artificial intelligence is creating capabilities and challenges that would have been difficult to imagine when I began my career.
And AI won’t be the last major change leaders will face.
The tools change.
The workplace changes.
People change.
Expectations change.
The pace of change continues to accelerate.
If we continue leading tomorrow exactly as we led yesterday, eventually the world around us will pass us by.
That doesn’t mean everything we’ve learned in the past is suddenly irrelevant. Far from it. Our experience provides context, judgment, and wisdom that can help us navigate what comes next.
But the past provides great context and experience.
None of us can live there.
The demands on leaders to continually learn and improve are real. As circumstances change and we learn more, we have to be willing to reconsider our assumptions, develop new capabilities, and sometimes admit that what we once believed was right no longer serves us.
That’s not weakness.
That’s growth.
Maya Angelou’s words provide a wonderfully simple standard.
Do the best you can with what you know.
And when you know better, do better.
Where might I be resisting change today that could prevent me from succeeding tomorrow?
What have I learned that I haven’t yet allowed to change the way I lead?
Where might experience be giving me an opportunity to do something differently?
CHALLENGE
Think of one important thing you know today that you didn’t know a year ago.
Then ask yourself a harder question:
Has knowing it actually changed what I do?
Learning gives us the opportunity to grow.
Adaptability is what turns that opportunity into change.
