I like to talk about a time I was naïve, clueless. A time I was saying stuff that didn’t make sense to people.

I was in Swindon, England. I had just joined a company and its executive team.

The company was transitioning from a regulated monopoly to one competing in the open marketplace. It also was globalizing—from 15% non-US employees to 55% (with more to follow).

Massive changes. The leadership felt we needed to become “humble, urgent and scrappy.” (Did we used to be “arrogant, slow and bureaucratic??” I wondered.)

I knew I didn’t know what I didn’t know. So I got out. I went to other locations to meet employees and ask what’s up.

That’s why I was in Swindon. I asked the group of employees a bunch of questions, trying to learn. I didn’t know if it was going well until one gentleman asked me a question that would rock my world. “Al,” he said, “why do you people want us to do bad work?”

“What do you mean? Why would we want anyone to do bad work?” I asked.

“Well, you want us to be scrappy. You say it again and again. Scrappy…that’s crappy. Why would you want us to do a crap job?”

My mouth fell open as I remembered the old saying about “two countries divided by a common language.” It turns out “scrappy” means “crappy” in almost every other English-speaking country. We had been promoting a do-what-it-takes attitude, and most people were hearing us say they needn’t do good work.

Big lesson: It pays to listen. We likely don’t know what we’re talking about otherwise.

Let’s keep re-remembering this!