Success Hack #3: Replacing "I Don't Know" with "I'll Find Out"

Are you ready to supercharge your career? Today’s tip can completely turn around your career with only three simple words.

Next time at work you are asked a question you don’t know the answer to, instead of saying “I Don’t Know,” try replying with “I’ll Find Out.” Instead of becoming an informational dead end, you’ve suddenly asserted yourself as the most valuable player on the team.

Think we’re exaggerating? Look at how strongly this scores on our Framework for Success Hacks:

Compounding Benefits: 👍

Consider what happens when you reply “I don’t know” to every inquiry. At some point, why would people bother asking your opinion if they are primed to expect you will not be adding any value?

In contrast, if you promise that you’ll look into finding the answer, you’ve created a reason for people to touch base with you in the future. As a result, you’ve immediately inserted yourself within the critical path of your networks’ decision making process. As you continue to gain credibility and authority on difficult challenges, your influence and power within your organization will only grow. In other words, you are creating benefits that will only compound the longer you apply this hack.

Diffuse Benefits: 👍

Applying this hack will give you many potential benefits, no matter the outcome. Simply saying you’ll find out establishes you as an authority on the subject, so you have created an instant reputation boost even if nothing else comes of it.

Better yet, there’s a very good chance that you actually do follow through and gain expertise on the subject. You’ll spend maybe five minutes reading up on the subject, and all of a sudden you’ll have mastered a topic that is clearly in demand in your industry.

Easy to Implement: 👍

This is very high on the “Easy to Implement” scale. At the most cursory level, you’re swapping out three words for three other words, so you’re using up the exact same amount of oxygen.

Perhaps more importantly, saying “I’ll Find Out” utilizes Cialdini’s persuasion techniques on yourself. One of his “Principles of Influence” is consistency:

Once people make a decision, take a stand or perform an action, they will face an interpersonal pressure to behave in a consistent manner with what they have said or done previously

When you assert publicly that “you’ll find out”, watch the consistency principle kick in, acting like an otherworldly force compelling you to actually follow through. The research becomes easier because you are utilizing this persuasion technique to your advantage.

You might argue that you’ve created a lot of extra work by volunteering to become the expert on a subject, but I would argue that this is incidental. You can probably get the basic gist of the subject from a couple of minutes of perusing Wikipedia, time you would have otherwise squandered checking the news or social media.

For more information, see our comprehensive list of success hacks.

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