Curiosity - the fuel for change

by Tony Fifoot, 2 mins reading time

I’ve been thinking about how to effect real change and growth in businesses. I think one necessary factor is curiosity.

So why is curiosity so important - especially in knowledge work?

• It helps us be open to new ideas

• It helps us deal with uncertainty and “be” in ambiguity

• It leads us to experiments, smaller decisions and learning

• It helps us deal with change more effectively

• It helps us learn how to learn

Kids are naturally curious beings - they explore, they try seemingly random things - all in the pursuit of learning and growth - even without knowing it. But we seem to lose that as we move into business.
In business, curiosity can be squeezed out by urgency and delivery pressure, in fact most businesses have been designed to squash curiosity at the expense of delivery. Innovation suffers, and long term business success then suffers.

It’s easy for leaders to say they value curiosity, but it’s much harder to create the conditions where it actually thrives.
Here are a few places to start (and I’d love to hear what you’ve tried too):

• Make time for learning and sharing, not just delivery
  Think about the Deming cycle (PDSA) - are you just Planning and Doing?

• Reward learning
  Do you punish mistakes, or learn from them? Etsy has their famous “three-armed sweater” award to celebrate learning from failure - do you have a culture of blamelessness?

• Model curiosity yourself
  Say “I don’t know” more often. It shows you’re learning, and encourages a growth mindset.

• Capture discoveries
  Do your teams journal what they’ve discovered each week? Sharing can compound insight over time.

• Encourage cross-pollination
  Run lunch & learn sessions, or occasional shadowing between teams. Great ideas often come from outside the room.

• Use hypothesis-driven thinking
  Are you testing assumptions or just following a linear plan-build path?

• Seek new perspectives
  It’s human to reinforce our own thinking. How can you shake that up and take on others’ perspectives? Invite guest speakers, talk to different customers?

• Hire for diversity of thought
  Just how good is it when a new person asks a “dumb” question that unlocks a breakthrough?

Learning Dopamine Hit - Our brains actually reward us when we learn and work out how to deal with unknowns, uncertainty, risks, but this is often crushed in the workplace - and that’s where we should be encouraging it the most.
Curiosity is a strategic enabler - It’s how organisations stay adaptable, creative, and ahead of the curve.

The real question is: Are you making space for it in your teams?