Ignorance often gets a bad rap. We tend to think in terms like stupid, dummy and foolish. Really, ignorance is just a lack of knowledge or information, so why do we tend to view it so negatively? Maybe it’s an American thing, maybe it’s that we so revere the American ‘can do’ attitude that ‘I don’t know’ seems scary or insecure. Or perhaps it is us leaders, so accustomed to having the answers or experiential knowledge at hand that not knowing seems like a feeling best left for the newbies.
Really, ignorance is far more neutral and even a necessary component of creativity and achievement. Think about the gift that ignorance can sometimes be. How many great things over the course of human history would have been accomplished if humans had known the obstacles that lay ahead? Often times, it is our ignorance that allows us to begin an endeavor and then it is sheer will and momentum that get us the rest of the way there. If we as leaders always really understood the true nature of the tasks before us, many of us would never get started.
Ignorance is the absence of knowledge and how do we get knowledge? Most of our real learning comes from doing something wrong. Science even shows us that this kind of learning is among the most ‘sticky,’ meaning once learned, we hang onto it. So maybe, rather than a stumbling block to progress, ignorance is part of the fuel. Doing it wrong leads to doing it right. A lack of knowledge and obstacles can even help get us started. Sometimes what we don’t know helps us rather than hurts us. There are benefits to ignorance. Ignorance isn’t so much negative rather just the state that precedes knowledge.
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