Tuesday, December 30, 2025
When I was a kid, my grandfather had an answer for nearly every question I asked.
“Go look it up.”
I found this endlessly frustrating. I didn’t want a project. I wanted the answer. Just tell me.
But it wasn’t a dismissal; it was an invitation to engage more deeply.
Instead, he’d send me to the encyclopedias. I’d flip through the heavy volumes, find what I was looking for, and come back; sometimes satisfied, sometimes more confused than when I started. That’s when he’d ask the real questions: What did you find? What surprised you? What do you think about it?
Those conversations mattered more than the entries themselves. At the time, I didn’t realize it, but he wasn’t just teaching me how to locate answers. He was teaching me how information becomes useful: when it’s questioned, discussed, and put into context. Facts on their own are inert. It’s what we do with them that turns information into something more durable. More useful.
Looking back, I can draw a straight line from those moments to where I eventually landed professionally — and to the way I’ve probably driven a few bosses, colleagues, and peers a bit crazy along the way. I’ve always needed to get all the way around and underneath a subject: a question, a court opinion, even the dry text of a regulation.
Today, of course, the act of “looking it up” has changed entirely. We carry supercomputers in our pockets. With them were once promised something close to a miracle: imagine the entire Library of Alexandria available to you, instantly. In many ways, that promise was kept. Access is no longer the challenge. Assessment, however, still is.
I think my grandfather would have been impressed by both the access and the speed of today’s digital world. He was a researcher at heart, a lifelong learner, endlessly curious. The idea that answers could appear in seconds rather than hours would have delighted him.
But merely acquiring information was never the end of the exercise for him. Digital speed wouldn’t have been enough. He would have kept questioning it (and himself) testing assumptions, looking for context, and asking what it meant in the larger picture. For him, information was only the starting point. Knowledge was what emerged after you sat with it long enough to understand it.
That distinction feels especially relevant now. We’ve solved the problem of access. What remains harder — and increasingly critical — is the work of turning what we consume into something that actually informs how we think and decide. That process still takes curiosity, discipline, and a willingness to slow down, even when speed is available.
My grandfather’s lesson wasn’t about withholding answers. It was about respecting them. And about understanding that knowledge doesn’t come from how quickly you can find something; but from how thoughtfully you engage with it once you do.
That’s part of what we try to do each day within our publications: not just point to what’s happening, but to also help our readers think through the questions that follow. Because information is everywhere. Understanding — and the advantage that comes with it — takes a little more care.
Until Next Time,
Mary Schuster
Chief Knowledge Officer
October Research, LLC