my grandmother taught me to love worms
with her nose pressed against the glass
of our living room window on the south
side of Chicago Graham would shout
excitedly hurry the rain has stopped put
on your shoes let's go outside or I'll
miss him my twin brother and I would
scramble outside screw the shoes to
stand on her haunches feet pressed into
the cool sidewalk i scanning for worms
throughout her 96 years of life
my grandmother maintained a sense of
wonder and delight at everyday details
she was the first to say I don't know
which always meant the start of an
adventure her into our local library or
family encyclopedia to answer the
question and usually ask new ones this
response was a humble one guided by
curiosity but not naive my grandmother
grew up or raised six children worked
full-time into her 70s in her old age
she could have acted merely as a font of
wisdom for later generations made-up
stories for my brother and me when we
asked her things that she didn't know
instead she made the conscious choice to
transform her ignorance into a
fascination with the question mark
because of her I grew up seeing
ignorance not as a bad thing but as a
decision point simply put when you find
yourself in a situation where you don't
know what's going on or feel forced out
of your comfort zone you have a decision
do you shut out new knowledge and its
possibilities or do you remain
open-minded and ask a question risk
looking dumb sure but gaining the
possibility of learning something really
valuable one choice stunts growth while
the other catalyzes it I'm here to offer
a perspective on why ignoring ignorance
is a losing proposition and to suggest
three
we can do to transform ignorance into a
vehicle for discovery and innovation we
certainly can't transform ignorance
though if we refuse to recognize it in
the first place
that means confronting the fear of
exposure judgment and shame for example
two female employees of a tech company
Salesforce wanted their CEO Marc Benioff
to recognize a major problem at the
company significant gender and racial
pay parity gaps initially shocked and
incredulous Benioff agreed to conduct an
audit of the company a chance to uncover
ignorance they discovered that over a
thousand employees did not receive equal
pay and instead of hiding it they
published the findings they use the
experience as a catalyst for change
adjusting staff salaries and becoming an
advocate for the same kind of
self-assessment at other companies for
Salesforce for other companies for us
avoiding self audit is the easier path
often ingrained and the way we work
researchers at Lowell University refer
to this trait earned dogmatism it's
behavioral where the more we think we
know and the more we consider ourselves
experts the more likely we are to look
to confirm that knowledge rather than
root out what we don't know as famed
investor Warren Buffett says what the
human being is best at doing is
incorporating all new information so
their prior conclusions remain intact so
as a kid I worked as a golf caddie at a
course near my home for seven summers
when I got there I quickly realized that
there was entire social dynamic to the
job players expected me to be an
entertainer a source of conversation and
stories not just a carrier of clubs but
the golfers were much different than me
let's face it there are mostly older men
with really high end jobs and at first I
felt like I had nothing to say to them
they felt so different
mean foreign omus and it was pretty
scary but I decided to take my
grandmother's lead and transform my
ignorance into that fascination with the
question mark so as I carried their bags
of fairways and greens I also asked a
lot of questions
this included asking Eugene fama what he
meant by a random walk I hadn't realized
that he was a Nobel laureate in
economics or that this theory was a core
part of his work but because I was
willing to expose my ignorance and ask a
question I discovered what felt like
entirely new worlds and systems of
language than what I had known before
not everyone though has such a friendly
relationship with the question mark at
many companies some see asking a big
question as inconvenient and inefficient
but asking these big questions can allow
us to see things that others can't do
Shahidi is a start-up that crowd sources
information from text messages and
social media to map humanitarian and
political crises in real time it was
started in just two days in the violent
aftermath of Kenya's 2007 elections as
its founders questioned is the media
telling the full story here if not how
do we build an accurate picture of
what's really going on this young
company is revolutionizing crowd-sourced
information mapping all because its
founders asked questions
refused to stay silent and in the
process empowered entire generations to
understand the strength of their own
voices
their rejection of ignorance catalyzed
innovation so if recognising our
ignorance and discovering how much we
don't know is hard taking the next steps
to transform ourselves and innovate the
systems we work in is even harder
we might be best at it when we're out of
our element experiencing or
firsthand picture a large dusty parking
lot surrounded by highways and sand
dunes with ten impromptu cricket games
being played I'm there sitting on a
metal grate next to my cricket teammate
a Sri Lankan man who worked at the
government hotel where I stayed my first
eight months living in Qatar as we pass
around bags of delicious fried salty
chaat after games my teammates and I
often talked about home their
conversations humbled me one hadn't seen
his family in over eight years because
his passport had been confiscated when
he first entered the country another
described growing up surrounded by civil
war I moved a guitar when I was 25 to
work for the country's museums Authority
although I had never before visited the
region I'd read everything and anything
that I could about it before arriving I
quickly realized though how little that
abstracted knowledge had prepared me for
the realities I would see up close and
personal staring them in the eyes every
day since then I've continued to
confront my ignorance in person face to
face to view it as a path to learning
not embarrassment to value questions not
silence beyond personal gratification
though why would we take on the often
painful gritty task of transforming
ignorance in the corporate setting it
can often mean the difference between
life and death
there is now an entire lexicon of names
associated with not asking questions not
transforming ignorance blackberry
blockbuster Kodak Motorola Xerox and so
many others the decision to shut out new
knowledge took them from market leaders
to market irrelevance so I ask you when
and
in your life in your work are you
staying quiet hoping that no one notices
that you don't know what question
potentially inconvenient but also
potentially transformative might you ask
instead although my grandmother was in
her 80s for much of my childhood she
never felt old It was as if her constant
investigation of her own ignorance
fueled by her endless curiosity kept her
young for organizations and for
individuals it is dangerous to ignore
ignorance to become experts and vast
knowledge that remains static to stop
asking questions to stop exploring and
inventing to stop finding the wonder in
the familiar ignorance is a catalyst for
change get comfortable in its presence
and continuously transform it into
discovery and innovation adulthood and
organizational growth should be about
this continuous exploration so here's to
a lifetime of adventure thank you