Why Leaders Must Balance Mundane and Specialized Knowledge

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Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of the five-minute leader, and today I want to talk about a concept that was created by Thomas Sowell. He's an economist. Oh man, I forgot how old he is now, probably close to 100 or in his mid-90s at Stanford University, formerly at Stanford University. He's written a lot of great books on economics, and he has this concept of mundane versus special knowledge and consequential knowledge.

And I really love the way that he thinks about this because he makes the argument that knowledge is just not knowledge. There are different types of knowledge, and it's not so much a hierarchy. It's about understanding in the moment or in the situation what kind of knowledge is going to be more consequential. And so let me unpack what that means.

So he talks about these two types: mundane knowledge and special knowledge. So mundane knowledge is stuff that you just know. It's localized; it's stuff that you've experienced. It's not necessarily training that you had to go through. It's just knowledge that you have.

So, for example, maybe you work in a warehouse, and you just know the best way to kind of lay things out to make it easier for you to get stuff. Mundane knowledge might be, you know if you live in a certain community, you kind of know traffic patterns. If you go to the store, you know the good time to go; you know when products are in stock. These are things that you've just experienced by being, by living, by existing in that kind of environment that you're in. Nobody necessarily taught you these things. You didn't go through training or any kind of formalized education, but you just know these things because they're part of your life.