Making it up

Everyone is making it up to some extent. This is the secret I didn’t learn until years into my career. I often thought I was the only one in the room who didn’t know what was going on, and was in awe of the geniuses always surrounding me.

This led to a strong feeling of imposture syndrome, believing that my value was less and I had no business being in the room. That was and is true to some extent. There are always smarter people who could do the job better.

There are many times where I’m still in awe of someone’s knowledge and wisdom on a topic; and I’m always excited to learn from others. However, I also realize that often people are making things up as they go along. They’re not sure, things are undefined and squishy.

When you ask a question to try and dig into something the responses are often made up on the spot.

And this is fine for most people. We’re trying to figure out things and navigate and live in the nebulous realm of uncertainty.

The challenge is when someone’s insecurity steps in and they pretend they know everything beyond the point of credulity. They’ll double down and pretend they know, even when it’s clear they don’t. Then, for the others in the room who are unaware of the secret—that we’re all making it up—it can be incredibly disconcerting.

This is why I love talking to people who are new in their fields. They know so much, and also know that they don’t know things. They have this sense that the experts in the field know all the information. The reality is they don’t. They just have a sense of where to head, a direction, a general idea of how to get from one point to another.

So now when I have a problem in front of me I often don’t know how I’ll arrive at a solution, or even know what the problem is. However, the way I get around this is to say what I know, and assume at least half of it is wrong. Because I come from a visual background I usually state this with rough sketches, diagramming what I think the problem is, and showing it to either end users or stakeholders to be proven wrong.

It works like a charm.

Posting your wrong answer will absolutely bring out the right answer in the end.