Lack of Knowledge & Education

There is a great truth in the old saying, “You don’t know what you don’t know.” In some cases, people embark on new projects without fully understanding what the outcomes will be, which is fine if the lack of understanding is taken into account. Innovation and invention depend on the willingness to venture into the unknown, and some great discoveries have been made due to failed experiments.

When we sail into new territories and have made contingency plans for things that might go wrong, we are doing pioneering work. However, when we rashly embark on a journey with no consideration of the adverse consequences, we are taking unnecessary risks that can lead to significant failure. Nowhere can this be more clearly seen than when reactor operators conducting unauthorized experiments in the nuclear power reactor in Chernobyl. The operators did not fully understand the technology they were using and subsequently blighted an entire region.

Unfortunately, there are many other examples of catastrophes that were enabled by this root cause.Groundwater contamination incidents, newly designed equipment that does not work, and new oil rigs that sink, along with wells and pipelines that leak, are other results of organizational cultures that did not value knowledge and research as mechanisms of control before taking action. The devaluation of knowledge, research, and education can be seen among leaders who have failed to react appropriately to a global pandemic, and those who deny the evidence of climate change.

 When the belief system among leaders in an organization does not value knowledge, research and education, and leaders rashly assume they know that they know all that they need to know, then plans and actions to control unwanted change, such as independent verifications, testing, auditing, and calibration control are denigrated as being unnecessary, and burdensome. Hostility toward knowledge causes leaders to fail to ask what might go wrong and forgoes the opportunity to conduct the types of thinking that can lead to preventive actions and contingency plans to protect the plans that are being made.

In many cases, knowledge and research is devalued because it could lead to changes in the socio-economic system that would cause those in control, or favored by the system, to lose status, advantages, or authority. Some societies have created economic and social privilege based on ancestry, race, religion, or ideology, so those who benefit from this type of system may belittle knowledge and education that would cause change in the system.  In its extreme cases, researchers scholars, and teachers may be fired, imprisoned, or they may simply be disappeared.

It can certainly be argued that this root cause category may not dig deeply enough, since the devaluation of knowledge, research and education in some cases could be driven by political posturing or by arrogance. However, in some settings it appears to be so widely spread that this should stand alone as a root cause category.

Sometimes the devaluation of knowledge and education is embedded in a system through a process known as reification. (1) In reification, communities embrace the belief that there is no need for them to learn to read, learn about science, or how other communities solve problems and improve their standard of living. People believe that education is pointless because the social system in which they live, and as they perceive it, has always been this way and cannot possibly change. Why should children be taught to read if it cannot possibly make any difference? Better for the children to forego schooling and go directly to work as soon as possible. Governments and industries may promote reification if it helps sustain the status quo and provides a ready source of unskilled laborers who will perform difficult work for very low wages.

In other cases, the devaluation of knowledge, research, and education comes from within the organization as a part of a tribal culture, which connects with the root cause category concerning entitlement.(2) In the tribal culture, employees have developed their own local set of cultural norms that they embrace and enforce. New members are indoctrinated into the tribe through formal and informal processes, which may or may not be known to management. The newbies learn what behaviors are appropriate and what behaviors are inappropriate to conform with the local norms. In regards to their relationships with management, the employees consider themselves to be the “we bes.”  We be here when you come and we be here when you go. And in some tribal settings, asking questions is inappropriate. Official policies and procedures may be routinely ignored as the local tribal leaders establish their own ways of doing things. This can lead to unsafe behaviors, unauthorized shortcuts, poor housekeeping, entering false readings on equipment, ignoring nonconformance in operations and maintenance, and a wide variety of other disciplinary issues.

Radical Quality serves as an antidote to reification. In order to assess, control, fix, improve, and innovate, employees and people in a community must be literate and learn basic math skills for collecting and analyzing data. They must understand and embrace the scientific method. Organizations must invest in at least some modicum of training and education.

Sometimes organizations and communities are confronted with organized and well-funded efforts to devalue knowledge, deny the scientific method, and to suppress information that may be vital to sustaining the organization. This can come from a variety of directions, but is usually rooted in political motives such as the desire to limit information that would cause people to question the status quo or question the veracity of the information being made available to them. Honest collection of data, critical thinking, and education – both technical and in the social sciences – may be suppressed in some systems. Applying quality methods may become a dangerous occupation.

What Radical Quality demands is that decisions not be based on hunches, desires, or private gain, but on data and evidence. Open inquiry is encouraged as part of assessment and the organization maximizes the education and understanding of the workforce in order to constantly control and improve processes and systems and to keep an active eye out for innovation and invention.

(1) Paulo Freire. The Politics of Education. Bergin-Garvey, 1985.

(2) John Robert Dew. “Tribal Quest” Quality Progress, December, 2011.