A short while ago, I was talking to a trusted friend with several years of sales experience in high value and high-profile products and who has become something of an ally in my business. I often use her as a sounding board and a pair of outside eyes to take a fresh look at the things that I do and to suggest alternative methods. Being a sole trader it’s been invaluable to me to have someone who I trust to talk to and will always offer well thought out and constructive comments, even if they might not be what I wanted to hear!
We were discussing the content for an upcoming blog post and it became clear that while I was fully versed in what the post was going to be about, it was all new information to her that she wasn’t aware of it.
I started to write the post and sent a draft to her for her to look over. In our follow up conversation, the learning model of moving from unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence arose.
This is a model that’s been around since the late 1960’s and for those that aren’t aware of this four-step process in learning, I’ll quickly recap.
The stages are:-
Stage 1: Unconscious Incompetence
This is the “I don’t know that I don’t know” stage. Some might say blissful ignorance”.
“Who knew that blogs are a great way to get new content on your website that Google loves?”
Stage 2: Conscious Incompetence
This is the stage of realising that you don’t know something and that you need to learn that skill or knowledge to move forward.
“Once I learned that blogs increase your Google rankings I knew I had to do something about it and get writing.”
Stage 3: Conscious Competence
This is the “I can do this, but I have to really concentrate” stage. You have to think about things to do them.
“I’m currently at that stage of writing these blogs and transferring them to my website, but it’s not second nature just yet….”
Stage 4: Unconscious Competence
This is where what you have been learning is now second nature and you don’t have to think about things, and you just do it.
“I’m sure in time the technical side of my knowledge in transferring posts to my website and formatting them in the way I want will become faster the more I Practice.”
For me, this is the stage that I describe as being you “don’t know what you do know” or perhaps more accurately “don’t realise what you do know”
I then started to think about how this applied to me in my photography business and the wider public. What knowledge do I take for granted that the public don’t know, and how might that knowledge help them? It was the same for my friend. They knew several tips and tricks to use in sales, that I wasn’t aware of. Why would I be, I’m not a professional sales executive.
In a series of upcoming blogs, I’m going to look at a number of topics relating to photography and information that is second nature to me, but might not be so for my readers and that might hopefully be of some use to them.
