If there were a straightforward, universal path to constructive change, we’d know it by now and that would be that. There isn’t; we don’t.

Change is seldom straightforward unless it’s catastrophic — natural disaster, economic meltdown, acts of war — and, judging from recent experience in all three categories, maybe not even then. Still, historically, people have looked back on such cataclysms and said, “Of course we changed; we had no choice.”

But even under dire circumstances, organizations and individuals are so different that the depth and durability of change can only be guessed-at — a subject for odds-makers and traders.

This is why there are consultants who specialize in change. This is why there are executive coaches. It’s why there’s a business priesthood of change-agents. And it’s why workers greet wave after wave of change initiatives with the attitude of Alfred E. Neuman who famously said: “Just because everything changed doesn’t mean anything is any different.”

But, setting aside catastrophic upheavals (and ignoring the sort of unintentional change by which entitites drift unconsciously toward extinction), some people and the companies they run seem to know quite a bit about intentional change. And some don’t.
Have you ever worked with someone who didn’t know what he was doing and didn’t know he didn’t know what he was doing? I certainly have.

I had a colleague who was really very good on technical matters — honestly one of the best I’ve worked with — but seemed completely tone deaf in working relationships. I know for a fact it cost him dearly throughout his career. I don’t know if he’s truly aware of that to this day (if not, it isn’t because he hasn’t heard it from me and others).

Have you ever worked with people who ignored data they didn’t like or went out of their way to avoid learning an inconvenient truth? Of course you have.

I’ve worked with companies whose heads were so far up their business plans they failed see fundamental shifts in the market that left them vulnerable to honest competition and prefigured deep (but avoidable) losses. But they wouldn’t hear it.

Abraham Maslow, who famously said (in Psychology of Science, page 12), “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail,” also gets credit for giving a name to the inability to see what’s right in front of us. Maslow called it unconscious incompetence.

Unconscious incompetence is the first of four states related:

unconscious incompetence — we don’t know we don’t know

conscious incompetence — we know we don’t know

conscious competence — we know we know

unconscious competence — second nature

Professor Maslow never did much with what has come to be known as the Four Stages of Learning model (and other titles like competency model and four stages of competence). But a good many others have taken a swing at extending and improving on his framework for thinking about organization and individual learning (Mike Vance introduced the model to us around 1980). The Change Engine is InsideWork’s attempt to express the iterative quality of learning and account for key variables in perception and behavior — especially as they affect corporate change.

Unconscious incompetence is the initial, passive state in the  learning cycle. Like distant thunder, unconscious incompetence prefigures the possibility that something is about to change.

But the thunder is still too distant for us to hear. In the state of unconscious incompetence, we don’t know what we don’t know. It is a state ignorant bliss. We could be headed for great opportunity or terrible disaster and not see it because everything seems to be in its place.

The state of unconscious incompetence doesn’t mean we or our companies are inactive or oblivious. In fact our attention is taken up with important things that need doing every day. Unconscious incompetence refers to blind spots that keep us from maximizing value or mitigating unnecessary risk.

Some blind spots are at least partly willful.

From the collapse of Enron to the collapse of the investment banks, analysts and rating agencies were in a state of unconscious incompetence when they failed to press for more detail on transactions they didn’t understand and passively accepted pronouncements that the formulae were too complicated to explain.

Some blind spots are arrogant, or at least careless.

Underestimating the strength of a competitor or rival is an expression of unconscious incompetence. I once reluctantly prevailed in a company conflict because a C-level executive was more intent on proving I was a boob than solving the problem at hand. As he ranted on, I realized he had no idea I would win if he insisted on a zero sum game.

Some blind spots result from tunnel vision — they’re not spots at all but a narrow focus that blocks a wider view.

Discounting or otherwise failing to leverage the strength of a colleague is unconscious incompetence (assuming it’s not vindictiveness or willful arrogance). Ford displayed unconscious incompetence by letting Lee Iaccoca walk out the door and launch the minivan somewhere else.

There being no evidence to the contrary, companies and their people drift along in the state of unconscious incompetence as if everything were just as it must be.

And then one day something happens…

• A competitor scores a big gain, or we watch them fail, doing pretty much what we’re doing…
• A conversation over lunch snowballs in a way no one expected…
• Someone in the company reads an article or post or book, or attends a workshop…
• A customer or vendor or intern asks a curious question about why we do things the way we do…
• An employee somehow shifts perspective and suddenly sees a business practice or personal habit for what it is…

Something happens — call it a catalyst — and we awaken from the state of unconscious incompetence as it dawns on us that there is something we do not know that may (or may not) be very important.

Most times, the catalyst is not a lit match dropped in a bucket of gasoline. Most times the catalyst is subtle; no more than the ringing of an alarm clock or the smell of coffee in another part of the house; a wake up call that nudges the business into a change state between unconscious incompetence and conscious incompetence.

Whether the company leaders come fully awake or hit the snooze button and roll back over determines what happens next.

• How do you handle data that don’t support your intentions?
• Is there a competitor who is pulling away from you? If so, how?
• Is there a competitor who is gaining on you? If so, how?
• In retrospect, did you ever lose an employee because — for whatever reason — you undervalued that person’s insights, capabilities or capacity?
  • Are there any hints you may be in danger of that right now?
• Do you know someone in your organization who is clearly in a state of unconscious incompetence about one thing or another?
  • What are the signs that this otherwise aware person is lost in the woods on this matter?

Next in the Series: Conscious Incompetence