Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

"For no ignorance is as great or nearly as dangerous as is precision imposed on misunderstanding or misapprehension."

What an extraordinary statement. We know that the best executors of a vision are those that will far outperform their competitors in any field. Right? Yes and no!

When we opened up talking about the wisdom of Peter Drucker, we talked about the wrong interpretation of data and information we've gathered. This post takes it to the next step where we not only misread it, but begin to apply it.

Now what makes this so dangerous for a business is the very fact that an idea or ideas is being executed. Think of a company - maybe our own - that has a fantastic ability to execute an idea. Those that have this type of precision can create the wrong thing so well, that it could make a company go months without the understanding that they have executed beautifully the completely wrong product or service based upon faulty understanding.

What Drucker's statement above is saying, is there's nothing worse than doing great work on the wrong thing. It even brings more ignorance because the wrong thing may work so well, further exasperating the situation.

While this reinforces the fact that we must really work hard to understand the meaning of our information correctly, it doesn't say much on how to prevent it.

There's no easy answer. I think the only think we can do is as a project is initiated, we must not simply go over the specs or processes and quality of a product or service we're creating, but also continue to filter it through our information and check and recheck it's reason for existence.

Does the information continue to make sense as you go along? As it progresses do you start to see something that doesn't fit within the company or the market you serve? Has something else come to your understanding that wasn't there when you made the decision to go forward?

It's better to end a project, then to continue going on if you find it's not what you thought it was, or you reexamine the information and see it wasn't interpreted correctly.

I think it's is dangerous to a company to proceed with something if it's found that it's the wrong thing to be working on. Better to swallow our pride than to ignorantly go on hoping it will work.

We can have great people who can execute as good as anybody, in the end it's still having the right idea in the first place that makes the difference. Filter through your idea throughout the process to continually confirm it being the right one.

Other Peter Drucker Resources:

Peter Drucker

Quotes from Peter Drucker

Leader to Leader

Peter Drucker Archives

Peter Drucker On Leadership

The Man Who Invented Management

Beyond the Information Revolution

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