The great thing about the world today is that just about anything you want to know about anything can be found on the internet. With all that information at our fingertips, I sometimes wonder how people can really be as incompetent as they are, but then, I had an epiphany:
What if they are not incompetent, but have just had terrible teachers?
Many people struggle with knowing where to begin. If managers have not been trained, how are they supposed to train others? Many managers are promoted because they became good at completing tasks and getting work done. Many of these managers are left in a state of flux, having to fend for themselves and figure it out.
This inability to be able to train or train others reminds me of a story.
A young manager in training and his manager went out to the shop floor one morning. After a few quiet hours out on the floor, the young manager, full of zeal and wanting to learn, became curious about what was going on around him.
He looked at his manager and asked “How does this system work?”
His manager thought about it for a moment, then replied, “I really don’t know.”
The trainee sat quietly from another moment, then turned back to his manager and asked, “How does this process work?”
Once again his manager replied, “Don’t know.”
