Any fool can know. The point is to understand.

Any fool can know. The point is to understand.

Many people get confused between Knowing and understanding; they are two related but different things when it comes to how our brains work.

Knowing is like having the facts or information in your head. It's when you can remember or recognize stuff, like names, dates, or how to do certain things. For example, knowing that the Earth goes around the Sun means you remember that fact.

Understanding, on the other hand, is a deeper level of knowing. It's when you really get what things mean and how they're connected. It's not just knowing the fact, like the Earth going around the Sun, but also understanding why it happens, like gravity and the laws of how planets move. Understanding lets you explain stuff and use your knowledge in different situations. 

Example: Product Knowledge vs. Market Understanding: -  Imagine you work at a company that sells a fancy new smartphone.

Knowing: Some of your co-workers might know everything about the phone. They can tell you all the technical details and features, like the size of the screen or the quality of the camera.

Understanding: But some others understand more. They not only know what's in the phone, but they also know why it's good for customers. They can explain how the phone is better than others on the market and why people would want to buy it.

Now, let's talk about two of your colleagues:

Colleague A: They know all the technical stuff about the phone but can't really explain why it's better than other phones out there. They know the product well but don't get why people would like it.

Colleague B: This person not only knows what's in the phone but also gets why people would want it. They can talk to customers and explain how the phone is perfect for them.

In this case, Colleague B, who understands both the product and what customers want, is probably going to be better at selling the phone than Colleague A, who only knows the technical stuff. This shows that knowing and understanding are different, and having both is really useful in business, especially in sales and marketing.

To put it simply, knowing is like having the information, and understanding is knowing what it means and how it fits with other things you know.

But here's the cool part: knowing is like the first step to understanding. You usually need to know something before you can understand it. So, they're buddies in your brain, but understanding takes things a step further by making everything make sense. It's like knowing is the foundation, and understanding is the fancy building you make on top of it.

As Albert Einstein said, "Any fool can know. The point is to understand".

Esther Atera

AGRICULTURAL ENGINEER| Farm Mechanization| Heavy Equipment Technician| Women and Leadership| Sustainable Agriculture|Plant Operator|

1y

💯

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Jyotsna Dantuluru

Business Program Manager at IBM

1y

Narrated so well .Thank you !

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AMRITAVA MAJI

Manager Data Analysis R&D and Tableau Expert

1y

Reading this stuff at 8AM in the morning when I was puzzled about how should I approach a complex problem....this article motivated me and I looked at the problem from a different perspective...and solved it. I find your articles and posts always inspiring from the day started my career back in 2012. We never met in person. But you are mentor to me always. “O Captain, My Captain!”

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Kushnoor Pathan

Web Development Engineer at Amazon

1y

thanks for sharing the useful information and it will help me understand how I can make the quality of decision’s . I like the examples put around “understands both the product, market understanding and what customers want” this can fit in any context of decisions made either individual level/business level/financial/personal career level.

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Information -> Knowledge -> Wisdom We have too much of Information. Thanks to Google-baba. Knowledge may give us the understanding. When we apply the knowledge many times we start understanding it more.

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