Here is another "Druckerism."
The theory is simple. When you don't know something, that forces you into the role of the interested, curious seeker of information. If you don't know something, you have to ask questions to find answers. When you don't know something and you need to know it, that is the context for unleashing creative energy.
William Cohen (A Class With Drucker) tells the story of Henry Kaiser, a North American who was contracted to build cargo vessels during World War II. The British were the world experts on ship building, but they were in trouble with the great losses being sustained. They needed allies to build ships.
The problem was that following the standard industry approach developed by the British, it took well over a year to build a new cargo ship.
Kaiser got the bid and had to learn how to build ships. He was outside the industry and asked questions from a new, raw perspective. He was not boxed in with conventional wisdom. His ignorance led him to bypass the tried and true methods as he innovated on nearly every part of the building process.
Kaiser and his team invented new ways to build these ships and eventually was able to produce them in about a month. Once, for a publicity event, a cargo ship was built in four and a half days! (Wow - Extreme Makeover could learn a lesson or two from kaiser and his team!)
Ignorance can be the starting point for incredible, outside the box, build it better kind of thinking.
In part, I think it was my ignorance, more than my insights, that led me to developing the LCI Exercises. How to spiritually form leaders who are intimate with God, who bear much fruit that lasts, who are transformed from the inside out and finish well?
I just kept asking these questions year after year, experimenting, looking around, fiddling with approaches, reading, researching, learning . . .
So, where are you stuck right now?
Where is your ignorance painfully obvious.
With the necessary desire (internal willingness) and the sustained disciplined, start asking the best questions you can and go looking for answers.
A la Drucker - use your ignorance wisely...
Brian K. Rice
Leadership ConneXtions International
www.lci.typepad.com
