Chief Ignorance officer

The term “Ignorance is Bliss” has found its true home in Gray’s article “Wanted: Chief Ignorance Officer”. The title of the article is captivating and the way Gray develops the idea of ignorance, “nescience”, as he defines it is outstanding. He begins by stating that in recent years the Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) “has found a home in the executive suite as companies have realized that often their single most important asset is their intellectual capital”, he then introduces the term “CIO” Chief Ignorance Officer and proposes that the time has come for the CKO to be joined by the CIO.

He brilliantly chooses to use the term “nescience” to refer to ignorance, to avoid the negative pejorative connotations of “ignorance”. His contention is that little attention has been paid to nescience as a resource because most of us will readily admit and taunt our knowledge on any particular subject, but prefer to downplay our ignorance. He states that “unlike knowledge which is definitely reusable, ignorance is a one-shot deal: Once it has been displaced by knowledge it can be hard to get back.” This begs the question: Why would anyone once enlightened want to go back to a state of ignorance? The answer, after reading this article is clear, because nescience proposes new opportunities and infinity possibilities, whereas knowledge “can stand in the way of innovation.” But as a word of caution, Gray states, “That doesn’t mean we’re better of being ignorant, but recognizing the value of nescience may help us manage better. Indeed, the job of the astute “nescience manager” is to steer attention away from the knows to terra incognita.”

He offers four principles for the proper management of nescience:

1. The Principle of Deferment: Meaning that when new ideas come to light, we should delay our thrust into available knowledge and delay the nescience as long as possible. This will allow for deep thought and exploration into areas that because of our tendency to provide quick answers we rarely go into. You may refer to this as “thinking outside the box.”

I found this principle very appealing to me because I have a tendency to memorize “fixes” and when I encounter a problem I usually have a check list I run through and if the problem fits whatever the criteria is I’m looking for, I tend to, many times blindly, apply solutions which in many cases prove not to be the best.

2. The Principle of Prematurety: This principle is counter to the first and it basically dispels the notion that you must have complete knowledge before acting.

This is very interesting because of the way I look at issues.