I once was interviewing a professional investor who invests in power plants and infrastructure. But when I asked him “What is 1 kilowatt-hour?” he had no idea.
Many people swim in the shallows. They make do by talking about high-level stuff, without really understanding the fundamentals. And if you have enough grey hair or experience, your real knowledge may never even be deeply tested.
You can hide your ignorance and if you are lucky, you might still make it quite far in corporate life. But that is no way to live.
We keep hearing about impostor syndrome. But we don’t hear much about the real impostors — people who pretend to know stuff but have no idea what they are talking about.
When I was in the world of investing, I saw that in the most haloed of all professions, the majority were impostors (and had no syndromes).
And I have no reason to believe that this malady affects only the investing profession. For example, most equity research reports are embarrassingly superficial. And this can’t be happening only in finance — it has got to be universal.
Remember — not knowing something does not make you an impostor. Nobody knows everything, even if it relates to your education or work. What makes you an impostor is pretending to know when you don’t.
If you or I don’t know something and we need to, the solution is very simple — spend a few days/weeks and learn it. No need to be embarrassed about it.
Have a beginner’s mind. Learn things from scratch. We are all beginners.
– Rajan