Commentary

Rekindle Curiosity, The Industry Depends Upon It

Anyone who has spent time around a toddler knows how innately curious these creatures are. To them, everything is an adventure; something to be discovered, touched, licked…and ultimately toppled over. 

When we were young, the world around us was a curious adventure. Life was full of excitement. Scary yes, but spine-tingling exciting all the same. We asked thousands of questions. ‘Why?’ was the most natural and (as any parent can attest) common question. 

But somewhere along our journey from childhood through adulthood, a tragedy occurs in almost everyone one of us. 

We lose our curiosity. 

Bit by bit, one small nugget-of-adventure at a time. 

In school, our why-asking is frowned upon. We’re told to sit down, be quiet, stop asking questions. 

Sir Ken Robinson summed this up beautifully in his TED talk ‘Do Schools Kill Creativity?’ when he argued that creativity is as important as literacy, but our upbringing beats it out of us. 

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Can it get any worse? It does. 

At college we’re told how to think. Don’t produce original thought. Rote learn content. Conform. Get assessed on ability to recall said-content. 

Some are lucky enough to leave college with an ounce of curiosity left in their bones. 

They apply for jobs (say ahem…in the ad industry) whereby Robbie the Recruiter screens them by resume keywords, ultimately filtering the lucky few down based on ‘correct’ interview responses. 

The fortunate ones land a job. That’s where the tragedy continues. 

In the workplace, those curious young minds filled with enthusiasm and a desire to help influence the world in one of the greatest creative industries….spend the first two exciting years of their career….enduring the dullest, process-driven, curiosity-killing ‘work’. They’re told to sit down, be quiet, stop asking questions. 

Dentsu’s recent CMO survey revealed that nearly half of CMO’s don’t believe their businesses are delivering on creativity well. 

I believe this crisis in creativity stems from the fact that our organizational cultures are not fostering an environment where curiosity can thrive. 

Let’s change this and bring back curiosity into the workplace. There are three steps to doing this: 

First, we need to spark the curiosity in our own lives. It sounds cliché, but it’s essential to practice what we preach, both at home and in our professional lives. 

I believe that we are the creative directors of our own lives, and each and every one of us has a creative learning spark that can be ignited by fostering curiosity.

Go and try that new book, band, beach or bicycle route. Always wanted to learn how to cook a pad thai or try your hand at writing poetry? Do it this weekend. There is never a better time. 

Practicing the curiosity trait in your home life will pay dividends in your professional life. Research suggests a positive link between life satisfaction and job satisfaction, and vice versa. 

In the workplace, recapture that toddler instinct, and ask ‘why?’. The more questions we ask, the more we learn. Our brains form new patterns. We challenge our thinking. We generate new ideas. 

All this curiosity may ultimately lead to both disruptive innovation, as well as kaizen, the Japanese philosophy of continuous incremental improvement. 

Second, we need to constantly make time for curiosity. I’ve developed a curiosity formula called the Compound Rate of Behavior (CRB): 

(Curiosity + Proactivity)*Time = Effectiveness. Simply, be curious and proactive. Repeat again and again over a time period. And you’ll become a subject matter expert rather quickly. 

As leaders, set aside time to ask questions. The 4-24 project is an initiative to inspire leaders to set aside 4 minutes a day to ask better questions, totaling one full day a year. 

Encourage your team to read 15 mins every morning on an industry subject matter. Before long you’ll have a knowledgeable team of diverse subject matter experts. This brings me to my final step. 

Third, hire for curiosity. Remember Robbie the Recruiter and his filtering criteria for ‘correct’ answers? That’s not cool. Don’t be Robbie.

Hire people who don’t just ‘ask the right questions’ but continue asking-damn-questions for the rest of their career. These are the people you want in your team. They’ve survived childhood, college, and now adulthood with their curiosity trait intact….that’s not easy. 

They know how to ask open questions that start with ‘why’, ‘how’, ‘what’, ‘when’ and ‘where.’ They’re open. They’re present. They’re non-judgmental. They’re lifetime learners. 

These curious, proactive minds will be the future leaders of our industry. Let’s make sure we don’t beat the curiosity out of them before that happens.

 

 

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