The Four Stages of Competence provides a stucture to how we learn. We begin with an Unconscious Incompetence; we don't know what we don't know. As we recognize our incompetence, we become Consciously Incompetent; we know what we don't know. Once we gain this knowledge, we can focus on learning and becoming compentent in the specific knowledge and/or skill; we then become Consciously Compentent. Eventually, the knowledge or skill can be communicated/applied without concious thought. This final stage is referred to as Unconscious Competence.
This blog is devoted to challenging the stages of conscious and unconscious competence. So you may ask, why challenge? Isn't the end goal to achieve Unconscious Competence in everything we do? Yes, it is, but I believe there is a Stage 5. This is the "Ask Why" Stage. This is the stage where we challenge what we know. We challenge our comfort zone. We break outside the box. This is where we either settle and take the easy road, or we take the road less traveled...the Road of Unconscious Incompetence.
Our end goal should not be to achieve unconscious competence, it should be to find the next road we don't even know exists.
What do you think?
