Curiosity is in short supply these days. We’ve all grown used to frictionless experiences and instant access to easy answers. Critical thinking is out, conforming to conventional wisdom is in. As more students cheat their way through high school and college, we will see more workers enter the workforce with no understanding of what it means to observe the world, question when something doesn’t make sense, search for answers, and evaluate the quality of those answers. We will have forgotten what it means to learn by doing things and sharing knowledge. That’s a big loss, because that’s how innovative ideas are born.
But it’s not just schools and students who are to blame. The contemporary business environment is one that disdains expertise in favor of hype and charisma while, paradoxically, being far too risk-averse. The more standardized and predictable a product or a market can be molded to be, the more reliable a return investors can expect. While this may be good for the bottom line in the short term, what happens in the long term is that you stifle innovation. Curiosity, creativity, and a willingness to take calculated risks rooted in reality and experience go hand in hand (or hand in hand in hand, as it were).
As society trends toward a bland, predictable sameness, a curious, creative workforce becomes a competitive advantage. That’s because curious people want to learn how things work. Understanding how things work leads to the kind of creative thinking that makes things better.
If curiosity and creativity are in such short supply, how are businesses supposed to find employees with innovative ideas? They don’t have to. Everyone is already curious and creative to some degree. But when your parents tell you “because I said so,” when your school is only interested in whether or not you can fill in the right answer bubble on a test, and when your job only wants you to follow directions, you come to understand that a curious mind is valuable, and you keep your ideas and experiences and questions to yourself.
Innovation and continuous improvement require curiosity. That curiosity is still in there somewhere. It just needs the right environment to flourish.
Cultivate a Growth Mindset
The first step to fostering an environment of curiosity and creativity is to cultivate a growth mindset. If you read the previous section and found yourself agreeing that everybody really does have the capacity to be creative, then you might already have a growth mindset.
Wisdom begins with wondering, to paraphrase Plato paraphrasing Socrates. To wonder is to admit that you don’t know. If you think you know everything already, there’s no room to grow, no room for curiosity. If you can admit that there are things you don’t know, then you can become curious. That’s what it means to have a growth mindset: knowing that there are things you don’t know or can’t do while also knowing that you can learn what you don’t know. When faced with a challenge, rather than innovate, those with a fixed mindset will say, "It can’t be done.” What this often means is “I don’t know how to do it,” and they are either afraid to admit it or don’t relish the challenge of learning for fear of failure.
There Are No Stupid Questions
This is a behavior you can model to your employees. People are often afraid to ask questions because they fear their ignorance will be taken for inability. In a competitive workplace and a tight job market, no one wants to look like they don’t know what they’re doing. Combat this by asking employees questions about the best way to approach various tasks, even if you already know the answer. Demonstrate that it’s fine if you don’t know something so long as you are seeking to fill in the gaps in your knowledge.
At the same time, you’ll be modeling patience, bravery, and resilience: patience as you answer the questions of others, bravery as you admit what you don’t know, and resilience to point questioners in the direction of an answer (i.e. “I don’t know, but if we consult the documentation…”). When people feel free to ask questions, they can begin to cultivate a growth mindset.
Reward the Experiment, Not the Outcome
If an employee has an innovative idea or an improvement to a process, make room to test it out and emphasize the experimental nature of the initiative. The suggestion doesn’t have to be adopted companywide. The idea for innovation doesn’t have to lead to a wildly successful project. It’s an experiment. The only way to fail is if you don’t learn anything from it. If employees are rewarded or punished only for their ideas succeeding, then they’ll be less likely to offer new ideas.
Build a Curious Organization
People’s attitudes tend to arise out of their environment. If they’ve always been in environments that stifle their curiosity, they’re going to stop investigating their surroundings and stick to traditional methods, even when those methods stop working. But if they are immersed in an environment designed to bring out their curiosity, it will flourish again.
A workplace built for curiosity exists within a culture of continuous learning and development. Employees are rewarded for finding flaws and improving processes. They’re given professional development opportunities. They work in cross-functional teams, where they learn the roles and responsibilities of employees outside of their department. When you put the right structures in place, it’ll almost be easier to be creative and curious than not to be.
