The Power of Why Unlocking a Curious Mind
in the summer of 2016
i found myself working at a free
michelin star restaurant in modena italy
it is called the austria francescana and
that year
he had been named the best restaurant in
the world
the owner chef massimo butura is a
master of traditional recipes
and his even greater skill is
transforming
this dishes into something new who could
resist the crunchy part of the lasagna
butura’s dishes were beautiful and
delicious
and hardly resembled the traditional
meals i’d grown up with
one busy night at the restaurant sous
chef condo takahiko
known to his colleagues as taka found
himself in a position of pastry chef
after a colleague left without notice
the day before
taka was overseeing the desserts when
suddenly one of the lemon tarts he was
making
fell to the ground at that same moment
chef botura walked in he saw the smash
star on the floor
he stared taka froze now a many fancy
restaurant the head chef would have
considered this a teachy moment
he would have yelled you would have
berated taka about his sloppiness
or made a speech about standards not
butura
he just stood there he thought for a
moment
why he asked himself couldn’t dessert be
smashed
that very question led butura to create
a new item for the menu
a deconstructed lemon tart nowadays
it’s one of the most popular dishes at
the restaurant
the name of the dessert oops i dropped
the lemon tart
but pura looks at the world even at
accidents and asks
why he approaches his work in his life
with awe
and wonder and a sense of possibility
though he’s incredibly skilled at
cooking his real talent
is curiosity we are all
born curious take my three and a half
year old daughter
lately one of her favorite words is why
as in why do we need to pay for things
why do we need to wear clothes when we
go outside
every time i’m confident i’ve given her
a satisfying answer
she palps me with another string of
queries
like most young children she doesn’t
assume
she has everything figured out or feel
embarrassed
about not knowing something she takes
time to puzzle over
issues and doesn’t dismiss ideas that
might be
outlandish curiosity has been shown to
be a key ingredient to learning
creativity and innovation but as we grow
older
our attitude toward curiosity changes if
you look at the data in fact
our curiosity peaks between ages 4 and 5
then declines steadily from there it’s
not just getting
older that kills curiosity i’ve taught
for over two decades
at harvard business school researching
how people can have more productive
creative and fulfilling lives in one
project on curiosity
in my work as a researchers i’ve
collected data from
hundreds of employees starting new jobs
initially their curiosity was high but
when i went back to them
eight nine months later i found that
curiosity had dropped by at least 20
percent across the board
no matter what industry they were in no
matter what job they had
this is not because we don’t recognize
the value of curiosity
to the contrary when i surveyed over
3 000 employees from a wide range of
firms and industry
i found that 92 percent of them credited
curious people with bringing new ideas
into teams and organizations
and viewed curiosity as a catalyst for
job satisfaction
motivation and high performance
curiosity my research shows leads to a
wide range of benefits fewer
decision-making errors
lower group conflict more open
communication
better team performance more diverse
networks
yet as i found in the same survey
only about 24 percent reported feeling
curious in their jobs on a regular basis
and about 70 percent said they faced
barriers to asking more questions at
work
we say we treasure inquisitive minds
as parents as colleagues as leaders
as friends but the truth is we
often end up stifling curiosity rather
than encouraging it and not promoting
curiosity comes with great cost
the good news is that curiosity is not
only something we are born with
it can also be fostered how
one way to start is by creating the
space for others to ask why
or what if we can model and invite
question asking pixel animation studios
has an impressive track record of hit
movies
and brilliant work by experienced
storytellers
which means that often new hires are
hesitant to question the status quo
but ed cutmo the co-founder and previous
president
knows the pixar’s success relies
precisely on going beyond accept his way
of thinking
when his people get started he makes a
point of talking about times when pixar
had made bad choices
like all other organizations he says
pixar needs
fresh eyes to spot opportunities for
improvement
in this way catmol gives new recruit
license
to question existing practices
recognizing the limits of our knowledge
and skills sends a powerful signal
to others we also create the space for
others to ask
why and what if when we remind them on a
regular basis
to ask those questions more often
in a study my colleagues and i conducted
at a large canadian bank
we sent different email prompts to
employees
over the course of three weeks one
prompt
reminded workers to ask why the other
prompt was
a more neutral message about engaging at
work
as we know from the email exchanges the
employees
had in the weeks that followed that
intervention
curiosity had an impact a meaningful one
those who had been encouraged to ask why
reached out to other colleagues more
often
and they did so to more varied
colleagues
across functions their networks were
much more diverse
this translated into higher job
performance and
ultimately quicker career advancement
whether we’re running brainstorming
sessions chatting over dinners with our
kids
or in a meeting with colleagues we
promote curiosity
when we ask questions and invite
questions
recognizing what we do not know and
encouraging
others to do the same let’s consider a
second way to foster curiosity
on a cold january evening in 2009
captain sally sallenberger just taken
off from new york’s laguardia airport
in a u.s airways jetliner when the plane
hit a flock of birds the plane
lost use of both engines which meant
that sally
and his 155 passengers were in serious
danger
sally had 208 seconds to find a place to
land
before the plane crashed there was no
time to turn around
and there was no real space below it was
over a city of tall
buildings most captains would have taken
the most
obvious course they would have tried to
land at the nearest
airport this is what experienced
so sally you should do but sally didn’t
stop his calculations there
instead he asked himself what he could
do
after running through the standards
options he thought of a solution not in
the box
he landed the flame in the yakson river
everyone on board was saved
we can all learn from this approach
especially when we’re in positions of
leadership
positions that come with a lot of
experience
according to my research there are
situations where
being more experienced be more expert or
more knowledgeable
leads to our being close-minded having
experience
narrows our perspective rather than
broaden it
and these leads to lower performance
experience it turns out can be a
negative
unless we also hold tight
to our humility this is what curiosity
is
when we acknowledge that the more we
know the more there is to learn
it’s a posture of humility that opens
our mind to the fact that there are
multiple ways to approach a decision
or a task by the time suli took
off in that plane he had tons of
experience
over 30 000 hours of flying under his
belt he has served in the military
so he had experience flying all sorts of
planes
he had also served as a volunteer in
studies about what goes wrong in plane
accidents
so he had plenty of relevant knowledge
yet
yet also trained himself to ask every
time you enter the cockpit
what can i learn on this flight
how might today’s flight go different
this curiosity meant
that in the most crucial moment of his
career
sally was able to work from a broadened
perspective
he knew to ask not just what he should
do but what he could do
and this made all the difference
like sadly we foster curiosity when we
adopt
a posture of humility when we recognize
that our expertise and experience
are really just a starting point we
promote curiosity when we
emphasize not just results but also
learning let’s consider another way to
encourage curiosity
in 1938 adriano levati took over his
father’s role as ceo
of italian typewriter manufacturer
olivetti
right away he introduced some drastic
changes
including a much more efficient
production system
he also made investment in the company’s
workforce
that were unusual especially for the
time
yet new factory buildings built almost
entirely of glass
so that workers could enjoy the view of
mountains invalid outside
and so that townsfolk outside could see
what was happening in the factory
you also extended the lunch break to two
hours
the first hour to eat lunch the second
to eat culture with a visit to the
factory’s extensive library
or participation in poetry or music
events
cultured sophisticated and
community-minded
adriana was an engineer fascinated by
art
design and architecture he saw his
interest as
interconnected and he believed he could
promote innovation
the kind of innovation that comes from
asking questions
and making connections if he encouraged
his employees to pursue a broad range of
interest too
adriano was making a bet that he could
foster curiosity in his staff
by creating an environment that offered
and celebrated many sources of creative
input
even when that input has seemingly
little to do with typewriters
his bat soon paid off one day
adriano was told that one of his workers
had been
caught leaving the factory with a bag
full of iron pieces and machinery
colleagues accused the man of theft and
suggested he be fired
the employee protested that he hadn’t
been stealing but rather
taking the parts home to work on a
project over the weekend
because he didn’t have enough time for
it at work
when adriano heard this he asked to
speak with the worker directly
at their meeting the employee explained
in his spare
time he was developing a new calculating
machine
intrigued adriano refused to fire him
instead you put him in charge of the
production process for the new machine
not long after the electric calculator
known as the divizuma was built
the first to offer automatic calculation
of all four basic mathematical
operations
in the 50s and 60s the divisum was sold
really well across the globe
as adriano discovered giving his people
opportunities to explore and expand
outside interest adrift outstanding
results
we too can foster curiosity when we
explore and broaden our interest
and when we help others do the same
input from unexpected places give
peoples reason to wonder about new
things
to ask different questions it makes us
curious
the italian sculptor and artist
michelangelo gunarati
is known across the world for many of
his sculptures
like this one la pieta
a few years ago a quote from him caught
my attention
michelangelo described sculpting as a
process
whereby the artist releases an ideal
figure from the block of stoning which
is lumbers
i find this idea powerful for the
question it provokes
a what if questions i’d like to leave
you with
today what if we look at those around
us in our professional or personal lives
and could see the powerful curiosities
lumbering within them
what if our role like michelangelo
is to bring that curiosity out
why not the results could be a
breathtaking masterpiece
whether it’s an idea a project the
perfect solution to a problem
or a famously delicious highly acclaimed
lemon tart thank you