Why You Should Never Assume You Know It All

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Business is a funny thing. It genuinely never stays still. This means that, even when you reach the top and you’re a big success, you still need to be on the lookout for learning opportunities, for new information, and for ways to become better. What you should not do and never do is assume you know it all.

Once you do this, your days of being at the top are numbered, and there are a variety of different reasons why this is. The key lesson to take away from this is what there is always more to learn (even when you think there’s not), and here are the reasons why.

Your Competition Will Get Ahead Of You

Once you have the mindset that you don’t need to learn anymore and that you know it all, you run a big risk, and one that is very likely to happen. When you stop learning, you are giving your competition, even brand new businesses that are just starting off, the perfect opportunity to race ahead of you.

As long as those business owners are still learning, still looking for new technology, and open to changing the way they do things (even if they’ve been working in the same way for years) then their business will keep growing, whereas yours will, at the very least, stand still, and in the worst cases begin to shrink. You’ll lose your top spot and soon you’ll be lost in the crowd.

You’ll Miss Opportunities

When you stop learning because you assume you know it all, you’ll immediately begin to miss out on opportunities. Learning isn’t just about accumulating new knowledge; it’s about discovering new partnerships and gaining access to new ideas that can make a massive difference to your business.

If you aren’t willing to gather any more information, you could easily miss out on the perfect route to the next goal in your business plan without knowing it, causing you to have to work much harder than you would have done if you’d just kept looking for new and improved ways to do things.

Setting A Bad Example

As a business owner and manager, if you decide you know it all and don’t set any store by training and courses, what are your employees going to think? Either they will follow your example and not bother to learn more either, just coasting along with the potentially limited knowledge they have, or they will become frustrated because they wanted to join an Agile product management course or they wanted to find out more about how to be a great salesperson or they wanted to gain a specialist driving license and you as their manager wouldn’t agree because you don’t see the point.

If this latter were to happen, you would very quickly lose good staff members who were willing to learn all they could to make your business grow, but who will instead work for the competition where they are given the chances they are looking for to shine and make the company more successful too. 

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