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We’ve all grown up hearing phrases like “knowledge is power,” and it’s the kind of line that seems to be clearly true on some level. But, it’s not always exactly evident how it’s true, or how it applies and plays out in the different areas of our personal, and especially professional, lives.

In a professional context, there are all sorts of ways you can accumulate “knowledge,” ranging from helpful systems like Acumatica container tracking, to comprehensive market-research plans.

At the end of the day, though, here are a few reasons why knowledge really is power in your professional life.

What gets measured, gets improved

There’s a very well-known saying in the business world, that “what gets measured, gets improved.”

Note that the saying isn’t “if you measure things it’s a bit easier for you to improve them.” The implied benefit seems to happen automatically – improvement comes as a basic side-effect of measurement, in and of itself.

Why could this be? Well, when you start tracking data and analytics of various sorts, it’s very difficult to escape from the awareness of whether you’re performing well and where you’re performing badly. On a subconscious level, you’ll likely be motivated to tighten things up in order to improve your metrics – even if you’re not laying out an explicit and specific action plan to do so.

On top of this, it may simply be that you didn’t really understand where easily correctable mistakes were being made, when you were forging ahead with insufficient data.

Simply measuring things is likely to improve them. And yes, it’s also easier to actively and consciously improve things when you have some data points to work with.

Data points are necessary for incremental “1% improvements”

Improvement is one thing, and it’s certainly possible to make dramatic improvements in your business – and to get a decent sense of whether those improvements are actually working out and taking hold – without micro-tracking various metrics.

But, when it comes to actively striving to make incremental “1%” improvements to your business or professional performance, you’ll likely never really know if you’re on the right track unless you’re watching the right data points and are paying enough attention.

There are reasons why this really matters. For one thing, as the author James Clear points out, many of the most successful “productivity transformations” out there have taken place specifically because of a commitment to small iterative improvements based on the concept of becoming “1% better” every day.

For another thing, it’s a lot easier to identify ways in which you can make things “1% better” in your professional life, day after day, than it is to hit massive performance targets with any regularity.

And, if you can get 1% better every day, you may be more than three times better within a year.

It’s often the people who are quickest to adopt the latest tools, who take the lead

“Innovation” is one of those big buzzwords in business, and not without reason, either.

The Apple Computer company had been around for years, and always played second fiddle to Microsoft, until Steve Jobs rolled out his revolutionary new aesthetic, and game-changing technologies such as the iPod and later iPhone.

It was innovation that skyrocketed the company’s fortunes.

To be innovative, you need to be knowledgeable. You have to have some understanding of the tools and technologies at your disposal, you have to be timely in adopting the newest tools before your competitors do – so that you can take the lead – and you have to understand the processes involved.

Without sufficient knowledge, you may be deeply creative – in theory – but unable to actually bring your vision to reality.