There’s an old saying in management circles that says what keeps a CEO up at night is not what she knows but what she doesn’t know.
Most CEOs with whom I have worked have learned to reconcile this lack of knowledge with an understanding that they will be vigilant. They do not fear the future; they work hard to keep abreast of trends and push hard to keep their people educated and prepared for the unexpected. Such an approach requires perspective.
The opposite approach is more unsettling. How many people who work for the CEO do not know what they don’t know and don’t know they don’t know it? The conundrum is ignorance compounded by blithe ignorance. There may be comfort in such ignorance because you don’t know enough to be worried.
This point was amplified by C. J. Chivers, a reporter for the New York Times. Speaking with Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air, Chivers talked about sitting down with a “prominent general” (whom he did not name) to discuss the investigation he was conducting into U.S. troops being exposed to chemical weapons in Iraq that had been left over from the Iraq-Iran War of the early 1980s. The U.S. military was denying all such reports. Yet Chivers had information from soldiers who had been exposed to such chemicals and some felt they were not being treated properly. [Among soldiers Chivers has credibility; not only is he a veteran war correspondent, he’s also a former marine infantry officer.]
The general provided Chivers with a folder with a formal report denying the existence of the problem. Chivers challenged the general with his own reporting, specifically citing a military report that described an incidence of exposure recorded by the military itself. It was then that the general, along with his aides, realized they had more to learn and undertook a prompt investigation. These officers in effect didn’t know that they didn’t know and furthermore didn’t realize they didn’t know it.
Chivers speculates that the chemical weapons stories may be politically sensitive and so the military denied the reports. “I walked out of that meeting a little while later and I went and sat,” said Chivers. “And I realized [the officials] are not even telling the truth to themselves on the inside [of the organization].”
Such ignorance – intentional or not -- exists everywhere. For that reason it is up to leaders to be vigilant to what people are saying as well as what they are doing. A person operating under false assumptions may be doing harm to the organization, not intentionally but due to the simple fact they don’t know any better.
You fight ignorance with illumination, which comes in the form of communication and education. You meet regularly with your people and converse about the work as well as about the problems they deal with and those they expect to deal with in the future. The executive who seems to have a lack of problems is likely an executive who is in denial. He may not be aware of issues because he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. That requires education. It will be up to the leader to point the person in the right direction and provide him with the background and even skills training he may need to function properly.
Failure to address ignorance is a form of ignorance itself, and it can be costly in terms of lost opportunities that may result from knowing what you don’t know.
