When people start a new endeavor, they are novices to it. However, they will often be using all the references available to them to make sense of how the new endeavor is supposed to happen.

Their approach builds on the idea, that knowing something similar allows them to know how to understand what they are being asked to do to step into the new endeavor.

When dreaming about a new project and imagining how to bring it forward, this happens typically with concepts like strategy, business plan, or marketing. I see that quite often. When I use the word marketing, people react as if they knew what I’m talking about. They may then react with the idea that they don’t want to make promises they cannot fulfill. Or when I’m talking about a business plan, they’ll explain that they’ve written a few to get a loan but that it didn’t serve them beyond that.

Being a novice then becomes for them the idea to find the gaps in their knowledge, while assuming that their existing knowledge suffices to understand everything else.

They are so busy trying to understand the gaps, that they miss the big picture. It’s a way to never let themselves review their understanding of a concept they assume they know. They leave aside, that different theories and methods also lead to transforming what for example marketing can be, or what one may want to use a business plan for, etc.

They feel more comfortable as knowledgeable novices and thus let go of the status of the novice.

It’s only when they start to understand more of their new endeavor, that they also start to see that within the concepts they thought they knew there is a whole new territory to discover.

But, that will only happen, when they let themselves be a novice and accept that they may not know anything. That is when they stop filling the blanks with what they think they know.

Being a novice then becomes allowing oneself to use curiosity and presence in the situation as assets. It’s a model for growth.