Are you cultivating a culture of curiosity?

Strategic leaders cultivate curiosity in themselves and their team.

THINK ON IT: Are you cultivating a culture of curiosity?

Anyone who's been around a toddler knows something about incessant curiosity. "Why" is a frequent question, asked often enough they can become an irritation to the parents. 

It's likely that as toddlers we were that way, too. And it’s equally as likely that we've tempered our curiosity over the years. We’ve learned how to curb it to fit in, or to avoid rabbit trails, or to save time and be more productive. 

And now, it’s becoming even easier to hand the curiosity over with the rise of people utilizing ChatGPT. It’s easy to head to the Internet for an immediate, collated answer of everything the web has to offer. But when we go straight to a Google search or ask Artificial Intelligence to do our thinking for us, we short-circuit our own curiosity. 

As leaders of our businesses, we would do well to reflect on our own level of curiosity and the culture we are creating in our firms. Do we ask enough “whys” about our business? Do we give ourselves and our team time to meander down rabbit trails and see where they take us? Do we rely more on our assumptions and long-held ways of doing things that we don't revisit why we do what we do (then we don’t know what we don’t know)? When was the last time we asked — no, really asked — a customer why they bought from us?

Cultivating a culture of curiosity isn’t a nice-to-have for organizations–it’s a must-have. Or you will keep doing what you’ve always done, missing out on the opportunity to try something new. 

Here's a question for yourself and your leadership team this week: What's happened in the business in the last week that surprised you? Why? 

If you have a hard time coming up with something you've learned, perhaps you need to ask that annoying question one more time: "Why?” 

[Premium members] Read on for five ways to cultivate curiosity in your organization and ten ways to increase it in yourself. Become a Premium Member.

“Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton asked why." — Bernard Baruch

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