Does it help being / (posing) as ignorant ?

Surprised to see the title ??

 

......the truth is "YES" it helps ...at least my experience says "YES" for me.....

 

Learning :

 

As I started growing up the career ladder, my responsibilities started to take new dimensions professionally..... and a very important lesson I learnt with this progression was to retain my urge to learn and learn more.

 

The day ego takes a higher place and you think that now you know most of all ....... you start your down fall on learning..... this also impacts on you holistically as a person as you are closed towards imbibing anything new coming your way.

 

One of the key approaches I take today towards new projects coming on my plate is to reuse my existing knowledge and experiential learning. The second is to improve on my existing knowledge.

Traps :

 

But much before I took to these approaches as practice, there were some attitudinal traps that I fell into. Some of them were 

1. I know it all :
2. What new can I learn beyond this ?
3. Everything is similar in this field, what will be the new challenge ?
4. If I can do it one way, I can do the other too

 Relating it practically as -

• As soon as I see a work item-I think this is easy job and 'X' # of artifacts and learning's from my last project can be reused here. No considerable thought at start point was given to the rework involved in customization of these reusable artifacts
• Oh! this is so easy and similar to what has been handled earlier by me
• This is the same old technology what can be the challenge here ?

Believe me ...... once the project started and we started to get deep into work ...was when I realized that though things are similar; use same old technology but the implementation and the legacy system handling always makes it different. To add to the complexity is the system architecture which will define the complexity in its own way.
Many a times I also realized that reuse was futile and total waste of effort trying to re-engineer. Ultimately it was only my learning that helped me craft and structure things better in the new environment.

An approach of playing "ignorant" also helped me ask most of the wrong questions at the right places and hence helped me identify my roadblocks much in advance than I actually would have.

Now ....big or small ...new or old ......each time I get something on my plate.....
My approach is the same ......
Oh!! new work..........Let's EXPLORE !!


..............and I am still improving and working on sharpening my skill sets.