Common sense

“Common sense is not so common.” -Voltaire

This is not meant as an insult to anyone, rather a gentle reminder that intelligent people sometimes make mistakes that could have been avoided had they communicated with the right people.  Common sense often takes us much further than knowledge we have drawn out of a book that gave us the basic principles  and concepts.  Lean manufacturing for instance, common sense tells us that you can't go any faster than the process in front of you, yet some analysts spend weeks trying to determine why the company is not shipping more product when manufacturing output has increased by 25 percent.  Weeks to determine that the quality control group has reduced headcount by 21 percent.  Common Sense tells us that a process cannot function at 135% capacity for very long without catastrophic failure.  

Intelligent people often spend too much time thinking and too little time doing.  Common sense tells us that the more time we waste analyzing possible out comes the longer it takes to see results.  Intelligent people are often afraid to take risks because it may make them "look stupid" if they fail, while common sense tells us that we will never succeed if we don't try. Benjamin Franklin was quoted as saying, "I didn't fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong."  

Now don't get me wrong, I am not saying that common sense will always out perform intelligence, that is a simply ridiculous. Without proper subject knowledge, common sense will get us no where and fast.  How do we gain knowledge?  let me sum it up in three words.  Experience, experience and well...more experience.