CHAPTER  |  THIRTY-FIVE

Ignorance Is Good

When Peter Drucker would begin classroom instruction for a course, he sometimes would make a seemingly outlandish statement to make a point. On one occasion, he began to reminisce about his work with various corporations, both here and in Japan. He described how often very simple things an outsider might do could have a major impact on the company. This was because the people involved were generally too close to the problems and assumed too much based on their past experiences, which they incorrectly thought were identical to the present situation. An outsider, however, would question aspects of business that a practicing manager frequently missed. Asked the secret of his success in these endeavors, Drucker responded, “There is no secret. You just need to ask the right questions.”

Unexpectedly, some of the students asked:

“How do you know the right questions to ask?”

“Aren't your questions based on your knowledge of the industries in which you consult?”

“What about when first starting out, with no experience; how did you have the knowledge and expertise to do this when you began and had little experience?”

Drucker responded, “I never ask these questions or approach these assignments based on my knowledge and experience. It is exactly the opposite. I do not use my knowledge and experience at all. I bring only my ignorance to the situation. Ignorance is the most important component for approaching any problem in any industry.”

The students were more excited than satisfied with this answer, but Peter waved them off. “Ignorance is not such a bad thing if one knows how to use it,” he continued, “and all managers must learn how to do this. You must frequently approach problems with your ignorance; not what you think you know, because not infrequently, what you think you know is wrong.”

Ignorance Has Value in Problem Solving

Drucker immediately launched into a story to prove his point. And his stories covered the wide range of his reading and thinking. One minute he was talking about Japanese culture, the next moment Jewish mysticism or warfare. The point is that since ignorance was something I recognized I had in abundance, Drucker's admonition that there was value in ignorance inspired me to seek a simple methodology to analyze problems. Although I found many methods that meet this criterion, the four-step one described here is my favorite and the one that I have used the most.

1. Define the Problem

You can't get “there” until you know where “there” is. That's not one of Peter Drucker's injunctions; it's one of mine. That's my way of emphasizing that, in order to solve any problem, you've first got to understand exactly what the problem is. You can see why Drucker's instruction to begin with ignorance is so important. If the problem has been defined incorrectly, based on past knowledge, you are not going to arrive at the best solution.

For example, early in WWII, the British were losing a lot of ships to German submarines. The British had built many of their ships in the prewar days. They followed plans based on their prior knowledge, experience, and skilled shipbuilding labor force so as to reduce the construction time for one of these ships to slightly less than a year. However, they continued to lose ships to the German submarines, and because their labor force was fully engaged in the war effort, they were losing ships faster than they could build them. Finally, the British turned the whole thing over to the United States, which was still at peace and had the manpower, if not the shipbuilding expertise, to get the job done. The British hoped that their Yankee partners could turn out the needed ships in two years.

If only the problem had been defined as “How can we build ships the British way without the same human and physical resources?” Then, the answer would have been “We can't.” Industrialist Henry Kaiser, with almost no experience in shipbuilding or a labor force skilled at shipbuilding, was the first to take on the task in the United States. If Kaiser's ignorance hadn't been brought to the problem, so that the question was rephrased, Kaiser and other potential U.S. emergency shipbuilders might still be working on finding the solution—or long since decided that it couldn't be done. With 1940s technology, that problem just couldn't have been solved. So Kaiser abandoned the British plan, redefined the problem, and used what he had to produce the ships.

2. Determine Relevant Factors

Kaiser needed to gather additional data. He knew what he didn't have; he needed to know what resources he did have. After looking into this, he determined that he could build these ships cheaper and faster.

3. Consider Alternative Courses of Action

Kaiser had to decide on alternatives to solve the problem. One option might be to develop new tactics. Maybe he could start a worldwide search for expert shipbuilders in neutral countries and offer them high wages. Maybe he could design new metal-cutting machinery and produce it quickly using his methods. It is possible he did consider these or other options.

In any case, Kaiser took an enormous risk with his solution. He had invested millions of dollars in it before he even built his first ship. Many of the methods he used had never been employed previously, and some were extremely innovative, to say the least. For example, it was reported that because it took years and extensive training to enable novice fitters to tightrope across the high structures of the ship as it was completed, Kaiser hired ballet dancers to work as fitters.

The British had expert workers with general, but in-depth shipbuilding knowledge. Since he didn't have such workers, Kaiser asked himself how he could proceed and came up with a unique solution. Based on his ignorance of shipbuilding, Kaiser redesigned the assembly process using prefabricated parts, so that no worker had to know more than a small part of the job. This method made his workers much easier to train, in less time—weeks instead of years.

Then, Kaiser introduced American assembly-line techniques. The British knew that for close tolerances in high-quality ships, heavy machinery was needed to cut metal accurately. Kaiser didn't know this—and anyway, he didn't have the heavy machinery. Again, he asked himself a question: “How do I cut the metal?” And again, he came up with a solution. He told his workers to cut the metal using oxyacetylene torches, something the British had not been doing. Amazingly, this turned out to be a cheaper and faster method than the traditional British one. In his ignorance, Kaiser replaced riveting with welding, also cheaper and faster. He called his products “Liberty Ships.”¹

4. Analysis, Conclusions, and Decision

During the analysis phase, a manager essentially compares the relative importance of each of the existing alternatives along with their advantages and disadvantages. Some alternatives have few disadvantages, but they have no great advantage, either. In any case, the manager needs to think through the situation and document that thinking. This ensures that there's an effective explanation for the decision making.

Henry Kaiser undoubtedly went through this process in detail when explaining what he wanted to do to his managers, workers, and board of directors. He would have left nothing out, concluding that despite the risks the best way to achieve the desired results was to implement the building of the British ships in the way he had outlined.

What were Kaiser's results? Well, he never did build a ship in the slightly less than one-year time period that the British method had managed with their skilled workers. No, sir! His first ships were completed in about a month. Then, they got the production time down to a couple weeks. And if that weren't enough, for publicity purposes, they constructed one Liberty Ship in just four-and-a-half days!

The Role of Ignorance in Problem Solving

My conclusions regarding Drucker's lesson on ignorance and problem solving is that no one need fear being incapable of solving a problem, whether managerial or otherwise, because of ignorance. While a manager may lack specific knowledge, experience, or expertise at the beginning of the quest, this is not necessarily a bad thing. On the contrary, beginning with ignorance, and recognizing it for what it is, is possibly the best way to approach any problem.

I understand that one of Drucker's consulting clients complained that he never told them what to do—that he only asked questions. “That was a little disconcerting at first,” reminisced the client. “However, we soon realized that our having to think through the answers to the questions he asked was causing us to come up with solutions that were making us a good deal of money.”