I don’t know

In our culture, saying “I don’t know” has a bad reputation. Admitting we’ll be making something up as we go along is a tough thing to do. It rubs against our pride.

So we talk like we know what we’re doing. We pretend. We roleplay. And we always get through it. We don’t know how to do it when we start, but we’re committed to figuring it out, so we keep pushing.

When you need help with a project, with a business, or with an organization, it’s tempting to find people that have done something successfully before. And sure, that can be helpful. If you can find them, great!

But the people you want to find are the people who are committed to figuring out how to make it work. Whether they’ve done it or not before is basically irrelevant. If they are committed to seeing it through, hire them.

And if you want to be a person worth hiring, be the person who will figure it out no matter what. Those people are almost never out of a job.