By By Jeffrey MitchellOf all the 'how to' questions my clients have posed this year, none have targeted the skill I most frequently recommend that people develop: being curious.
I am an evangelist for curiosity because businesses become moribund without it. Roget's Thesaurus defines the absence of curiosity as boredom, ennui, taking no interest, a minding one's own business. This mental quicksand is particularly hazardous to quality initiatives. If the dialog between senior management and quality professionals lacks the creative energy of curiosity, genuine collaboration will downshift to the politics of compromise.
Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline, puts it well when he says that in spite of putting people on teams, processes, and joint ventures, the real barriers to collaboration and communication remain in people's heads.
Why Aren't People More Curious?
I think the reason so few people wonder how to be curious is that curiosity is seen as a product of a particular situation rather than something people do. In other words, you'll become curious when there's something to be curious about.
Yet, the human brain works in just the opposite manner. Rather than identify gaps in our knowledge for further inquiry, our brains fill in the blanks with untested assumptions. Tom doesn't ask why his boss interrupted him several times during today's staff meeting; he knows she doesn't respect him. Mary doesn't ask what to include in her progress update to the project team; she knows what everyone wants to hear. Our natural tendency is to form judgments first and ask questions later, if at all.
Certainly, assumptions are necessary. They are the conclusions we draw based on the data at hand. Our assumptions about reality enable us to function in the world on a day-to-day basis. We assume each day that our car will start, or that the buses will run on time, that our office is still in the same building, that our friends still like us, that we will have the same mental and physical capabilities we had yesterday. None of these is certain to be true, but making these assumptions allows us to navigate our lives without becoming paralyzed by unknown possibilities.
Assumptions become problematic when we forget that they are simply a shorthand way for us to maneuver through our day. When we don't challenge our assumptions, new information falls into them like water into buckets, the water taking the shape of the bucket.
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