Dogma – a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.

In this blog post, I argue for a vision of the workplace and society where people are comfortable admitting their lack of knowledge and not feeling insecure about it. I argue that the mentality of thinking you have all the answers kills curiosity and prevents learning and growth.

I believe that a competitive economy requires companies to be curious and experimental. However, in a culture where someone is expected to “know” everything, fear of being wrong hinders learning and experimentation. Many front-line managers are in this predicament which leads to a loss in a company’s ability to be curious and eventually leads to a lack of innovation and growth. Similarly, union members don’t suggest innovative and collaborative relationships with management in fear of being out of step with accepted union norms and values.

I feel that both management and unions need to be comfortable admitting that they don’t know everything when it comes to improved organizational performance. The goal of progressive companies and unions should be to cultivate a scientific mindset of “I don’t know, and how can we we test each others assumptions.” This will allow for a collaborative journey towards finding the truth and improving the workplace and operational performance.

One goal of any management-union relationship should be to shift away from the paradigm of “showing smartness” and to cultivate everyone’s curiosity. Only then can we talk about self-learning needed by unions and companies to protect jobs and improve the working conditions of employees.

What are your thoughts?