This is one of the goals of my content creation and an idea changed my life. Let me share it with you – maybe it will change yours.

The Articulated And The Unarticulated

You can think of human beings as possessing both an articulated consciousness and an unarticulated consciousness. We do & say things according to what we know, what we’ve articulated with thought. But our unarticulated consciousness influences our behavior, beliefs, and actions.

I can illustrate this with a real-world example.  During my sales career, I observed that when I closed a sale, many of the prospects made the decision to purchase with their unarticulated consciousness then justified the decision afterward with articulated thought. They decided to buy first based on feelings or their gut instincts – then came up with reasons why it was a good decision afterward. A lot of people follow this pattern of decision-making – they do or say things then justify them afterward.

How Our Unarticulated Consciousness Communicates To Us

Additionally, you can notice this phenomenon at work yourself when you’re drawn to a particular piece of art or literature. We are drawn to art by our unarticulated consciousness when it wants to communicate something to us from outside our current bubble of understanding. The problem is that most people stop there – they don’t actually contemplate the art and articulate what it is that they are meant to understand. 

I believe that all art and literature communicates something to us in this way – in fact, I believe that the difference between art and ‘not art’ is that art communicates to us and ‘not art’ doesn’t. Thus, a nude by Michelangelo isn’t pornography because it communicates something to us – but a nude pic in a dirty magazine is.

For the past ten years or so since I first noticed this phenomenon, I’ve been trying to articulate as much of the unarticulated understanding in the things around me as I can. I’ve found great meaning in much of the art that I’ve been drawn to, such as the paintings of John William Waterhouse or the Lord of the Rings. There is great meaning to be found in the stories and myths that we are drawn to – I’ve found the Lord of the Rings series to be very inspiring for example. You can read more about that in The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell.

But What Does This Have To Do With Business & Your Career?

The real breakthrough I had was when I began to articulate the tacit knowledge of my colleagues and professionals. Your experienced colleagues (and maybe even you) have built up a deep well of tacit, unarticulated knowledge over their careers – this is known as “professional intuition.” My career began to leapfrog when I began articulating what I saw them doing. 

Take our company CEO for example – for years we’ve concentrated a large portion of our resources on a single source of leads, an agency review site. For years we concentrated on just that single review site – we didn’t ask our clients to review us anywhere else. We’ve been on the top of the site’s recommended list for years now – and that review site has been a fat cow that has kept giving milk the whole time I’ve worked at the agency. Our CEO knew that was the strategy to implement because of his years of experience – but it was professional intuition, it was unarticulated.

You’ve got to articulate those things when you see them. My CEO was applying the strategic doctrine of “defeat in detail” (loosely speaking) without knowing it explicitly. He simply implicitly or tacitly understood that was the right strategy.

Key Takeaway

You can improve your professional acumen and catapult your career by articulating the professional intuition of your more experienced colleagues.

Ordinary_Wylie

Articulating tacit understanding is one of the reasons why I decided to start creating content. I’m looking to better understand these things myself, and I’m looking for my tribe – a group of like-minded people who want to understand these things as well. This was an idea that changed my life – and continues to change it. If it changes yours, let me know in the comments below.