{"id":105,"date":"2009-09-25T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-25T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/?p=105"},"modified":"2009-09-25T11:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-25T16:00:00","slug":"ignorance-keeps-you-perky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/2009\/09\/ignorance-keeps-you-perky\/","title":{"rendered":"&quot;Ignorance keeps you perky&quot;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this year <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB123388255500354969.html\" target=\"_blank\">Peggy Noonan wrote an article<\/a> about President Obama&#8217;s new term: &#8220;Every new president starts out fresh, in part because he doesn&#8217;t know what he doesn&#8217;t know. Ignorance keeps you perky.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The months since have shown that running a government is more challenging than running a campaign. Though you and I are not seeking to be the leader of the free world, Noonan&#8217;s point can be translated to those who strive to deliver projects and lead teams. When we first take over a project or team, our optimism may be based on ignorance. What is it that we don&#8217;t know?<\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"WIDTH: 120px; HEIGHT: 240px\" vspace=\"2\" marginheight=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?t=instituteforl-20&amp;o=1&amp;p=8&amp;l=as1&amp;asins=0131568159&amp;fc1=000000&amp;IS2=1&amp;lt1=_blank&amp;m=amazon&amp;lc1=0000FF&amp;bc1=000000&amp;bg1=FFFFFF&amp;f=ifr\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"6\"><\/iframe>This all comes to mind as I prepared for my podcast interview next week with Michael Roberto, author of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0131568159?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=instituteforl-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0131568159\" target=\"_blank\">Know What You Don&#8217;t Know: How Great Leaders Prevent Problems Before They Happen<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In the book, Professor Roberto essentially tells us that leaders must first hone their skills as problem-finders, not just problem-solvers. He offers very practical advice on how leaders can overcome the many barriers that make it a challenge to discover problems earlier instead of reacting to them later when the consequences can be much more severe.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.i-leadonline.com\/podcast\">podcast episode<\/a> is not scheduled to be published until late October but I invite you to get your copy of Michael&#8217;s book now and enjoy the interview when it comes out.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iveybusinessjournal.com\/article.asp?intArticle_ID=853\" target=\"_blank\">here&#8217;s an article<\/a> that Michael just recently published that will give you a taste for what&#8217;s in store.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s to us all becoming better problem-finders!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this year Peggy Noonan wrote an article about President Obama&#8217;s new term: &#8220;Every new president starts out fresh, in part because he doesn&#8217;t know what he doesn&#8217;t know. Ignorance keeps you perky.&#8221; The months since have shown that running a government is more challenging than running a campaign. Though you and I are not&#8230; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/2009\/09\/ignorance-keeps-you-perky\/#more-105\">Continue Reading &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[48,17,21,32,20,60,23,33,26],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p488Wj-1H","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}