The Unconscious Incompetent
The theory of four distinct stages of competence was developed in the 1970s by Noel Burch of Gordon Training International, a global human relations training organization.
Of these four stages, the one I want to talk about is the unconscious incompetent, or the person that doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.

Tell me if the following sounds familiar: You are in a meeting with your colleagues to create the next big product. You debate the different approaches you could take and during the meeting, you hear the opinions of several in the group. You finish your meeting and make a decision based on the group’s consensus of what is the best idea or even default to the strongest personality in the room. Does this really make sense? (more…)