The Best Advice I Almost Ignored
Early in my career, I found myself in deep water—fast.
I was young, eager, and suddenly handed the keys to a role that looked more like a maze than a job title: COO for a multi-state nonprofit operation. It wasn’t a tidy little desk job. Across my desk was responsibility for manufacturing, logistics, retail, HR, benefits, tax issues, compliance, finance, accounting and controlling, IT, legal, real estate, fundraising, and a service matrix that’d make your head spin. Some days I was at a board meeting in a blazer. Other days, I was in steel-toed boots walking a warehouse floor. Many days, I was doing both.
Oh—and I was also the guy picking insurance policies.
Now, I wasn’t complaining. It was a tremendous opportunity. But I’ll be honest: I was in over my head, and I knew it. I needed advice. Not tomorrow—yesterday.
So, I did what a lot of folks do when they’re stuck: I called my dad. The person I trusted most.
I was telling him about a book I’d been reading: The Knowing-Doing Gap. It made a lot of sense. Smart stuff. But I didn’t know how to apply it.
Then he said something simple that changed the course of things:
“Why don’t you just call the author?”
It caught me off guard. I hadn’t even considered that.
But I did.
And when I finally got the author on the line, what struck me wasn’t some magic framework or fancy lingo. It was how blunt the main idea was:
Most organizations don’t fail because they don’t know what to do.
They fail because they don’t do what they already know.
That’s the “knowing–doing gap.” And once you start seeing it, you see it everywhere.
What I Thought My Job Was… And What It Actually Was
Back then, I was unclear what the job mostly was—it seemed like it was mostly everything.
But the book—and that conversation—flipped a switch for me.
It said:
“Competitive advantage comes from being able to do things consistently that others only talk about.”
Put another way: less worship of brains, more respect for follow-through.
That was the gut punch I needed. Because at the time, my calendar was stuffed with high-level planning meetings where nothing actually changed. We had “smart” conversations—but no movement.
That’s when I realized:
If my calendar was full of meetings where nothing concrete changed in the next two weeks,
I wasn’t leading…I was just generating noise.
The Patterns That Hit Me Hard
The book laid out common traps—most of which I had already fallen into.
Talk substituting for action. We confused “a great discussion” with “real progress.”
Memory substituting for thinking. Old habits carried over just because “that’s how we’ve always done it.”
Fear smothering innovation. People would hesitate to speak up or try new things because the cost of failure was higher than the cost of standing still.
Measurement blinding judgment. We tracked what was easy to measure instead of what actually mattered.
Internal competition killing collaboration. Sites and teams hoarded knowledge so they could “win,” while the organization overall lost.
The Fix Wasn’t Magic. It Was Muscle.
Here’s what shifted for me:
I stopped treating “optimal strategy” as the goal. It became 20% of my value. The other 80%? Relentless operational follow-through. Tenacity.
I stopped blaming motivation. When something didn’t get done, I asked: (1) Is the process workable? (2) Are we rewarding the right things? (3) Are people afraid to act? (4) Are we saying “collaborate” but rewarding solo heroes?
Nine times out of ten? The problem wasn’t lazy people. It was a system problem.
I focused on making action easier than inaction. Want collaboration? Sit teams together. Want faster decisions? Shorten approval chains.
I started rewarding progress, not polish. Recognize the team that shipped something—not just the one that made the prettiest slide-deck.
Culture Is Built in the Small Stuff
Here’s where it really hit home:
Every day, in small moments, you’re either widening the knowing–doing gap or closing it.
End a meeting without a clear owner and next step? Gap widens.
Celebrate someone who raised a hard truth? Gap narrows.
Let “we’ve always done it this way” slide by unchallenged? Gap widens.
Push for a 60-day pilot over a 6-month plan? Gap narrows.
You don’t need a culture consultant for that. You just need consistency.
The Real Lesson in Dad’s Advice
Looking back, when my father told me to “call the author,” it wasn’t just a clever idea. It was the lesson in miniature:
Don’t confuse access to knowledge with use of knowledge.
Don’t put experts on pedestals—use them.
And don’t wait to feel ready. Just take the next step.
That phone call didn’t just connect me with the author. It kicked off a mindset shift that’s stayed with me for decades now:
You will never have all the answers.
You will rarely feel fully ready.
But you can always shrink the gap between what you know and what you do next.
Sometimes, that starts with just picking up the phone.