Rookie Smarts - Why Learning Beats Knowing in the New Game of Work

CHAPTER 6

THE PERPETUAL ROOKIE

                  It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.

—JOHN WOODEN

“I had no clue how to do this, but somehow this turned out to be an advantage. . . .” That’s how Bob Hurley recounted how he built Hurley International into an action sports powerhouse. Wielding a Skil 100 planer, a power hand tool used to shape surfboards, he described how it had all begun back in the late 1970s.

At the time, he was a shop kid working at a surf shop at Sixth Street and the Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach, California—aka surf capital, USA. Not much good behind the counter, Hurley begged the store manager to let him work in the back, shaping the surfboards. A young husband ...