Knowing the Playbook Isn't the Same as Playing the Game

Knowing what to do can give you the false confidence that you know how to do it.

They're not the same thing.

Business owners have access to more information than we've probably ever had.

Books. Podcasts. Consultants. Specialists. Other business owners. Industry experts.

And now AI.

Want an accountability chart? AI can build you one.

Need an onboarding plan? Done.

Sales compensation structure? It can give you a starting point.

SOP? Give it the process and choose your format.

Want to understand gross margin? You can have a pretty good explanation in about 30 seconds.

That's incredible.

But there's a problem.

Knowing the playbook isn't the same as playing the game.

The playbook leaves out a lot

Take something as simple as:

Hold your people accountable.

I've probably read some version of that hundreds of times.

Conceptually, it's not difficult.

Set clear expectations. Define who's responsible. Measure the outcome. Give feedback. Follow up.

Got it.

Now go do it.

Your otherwise excellent employee misses the same expectation for the third time.

Why?

Did they misunderstand you?

Did you explain it poorly?

Did they receive enough training?

Are they capable but still developing?

Are they capable and simply not doing it?

Is the expectation itself unrealistic?

Do you correct them again?

Demonstrate it?

Give them more room?

Push harder?

At what point does a training problem become a performance problem?

None of those decisions are particularly dramatic.

Most will never appear in a business book.

But there can be 50 of these quiet decisions between the sentence "hold people accountable" and actually building an accountable organization.

That's playing the game.

I learned this through management

I had worked for managers before starting my own business.

I understood management conceptually.

Then I had to actually manage people.

Very different experience.

You can create role descriptions.

Build scorecards.

Hold review meetings.

Document responsibilities.

Create training programs.

Those things matter.

But eventually you're sitting across from an actual human being.

And people don't arrive standardized.

One person picks something up immediately.

Another needs to see it.

Someone else needs to do it, get it wrong, receive feedback and do it again.

One person has 90% of what you need on day one.

Another has 70%, but has the ability and desire to close the gap quickly.

A good manager has to recognize the difference.

That's not something I think you completely learn from a management framework.

You develop it by managing.

Watch what people do

One thing experience taught me is to pay attention to what people do, not only what they tell me.

Someone can say:

"Yep, I've got it."

Great.

Now give them an opportunity to perform.

What happens next tells me considerably more.

And this is where I think owners sometimes get themselves into trouble.

They say:

"I hired this person because I need them to figure it out."

Sometimes that's completely reasonable.

But sometimes figure it out becomes an excuse for not managing.

Training requires two people

My rule with new employees is pretty simple:

Meet me halfway.

The business has a responsibility.

Give people clear expectations.

Give them access to the right resources.

Give them enough training to establish a foundation.

Answer questions.

Provide feedback.

And then give them enough room to actually perform.

The employee has a responsibility too.

Use the resources.

Ask questions.

Apply the feedback.

Learn independently.

Try.

Adjust.

Improve.

If I give you access to the resources and you never use them, you're not meeting me halfway.

But if I give you a job title, an SOP and a login and expect you to magically figure out everything else, I'm probably not meeting you halfway either.

Everybody has a role to play.

Including the manager.

And don't manage away your ability to evaluate someone

There's another mistake I've learned to avoid.

You can spend the first 30 days telling a new employee exactly what to do at every step.

They might look fantastic.

The problem is that you don't actually know whether they're performing.

You know they can follow your instructions.

Eventually you have to back away.

Give them an opportunity to do the work.

Watch what happens.

Now you can see where they're naturally strong.

Where they struggle.

Where they need resources.

Where they need feedback.

And whether they actually step into the role.

Sometimes they do.

Sometimes, despite everyone's best efforts, they don't.

You can't force someone to want a job as much as you want them to have it.

That's something I understood much better after actually managing people than I ever could have from reading about management.

This isn't really about management

Management is just one example.

The same thing happens everywhere in business.

You can understand pricing without ever having priced hundreds of jobs.

You can understand hiring without having made enough bad hires to recognize what you missed.

You can understand negotiation without having sat across from someone when neither side wants to move.

You can understand financial statements without having watched the decisions inside a business eventually show up in those numbers.

The concept matters.

But experience adds something the concept can't:

judgment.

And AI makes this distinction more important, not less

AI has dramatically lowered the cost of knowledge.

I think that's a very good thing.

It can get an owner 70% or 80% of the way toward understanding something much faster than before.

But it can't replace the part where you actually have to go do it.

Do.

Observe.

Get something wrong.

Recalibrate.

Do it again.

Each time, ideally, you move a little closer to the outcome you were trying to achieve.

Do that enough and something changes.

You stop having to consciously recall every piece of the playbook.

You start recognizing patterns.

Your judgment gets faster.

Your instincts improve.

Eventually some things that once required enormous mental effort start feeling almost second nature.

That's experience.

And there isn't really a shortcut for repetition.

So when do you stop learning and start doing?

I use an 80% rule.

Not because 80% is some scientifically perfect threshold.

It's just my rule of thumb.

If I understand something well enough that I can explain the basic concept back—even if I'm mostly repeating what I've just learned—and I can recall enough of it to begin applying it, I'm probably ready to start.

I don't need 100%.

Because there's a portion of that last 20% that I may not even be capable of understanding properly until I've actually done the thing.

That's where consuming more information can become counterproductive.

Another book.

Another podcast.

Another framework.

Another AI conversation.

Eventually, more knowledge stops preparing you.

It starts delaying you.

The playbook is the starting point

Learn enough to understand what you're trying to do.

Understand the major risks.

Get yourself roughly 80% there.

Then pull the trigger.

Do it.

See what happens.

Adjust.

Do it again.

You won't always get it right.

That's part of playing the game.

Because knowing the playbook can make you informed.

Playing the game is what eventually makes you good.

Tiffany K. Founder, Advisor For Hire