“Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly.” ~ Arnold Edinborough
Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs has been the subject of much interest among those who study leadership. He was known to be a perfectionist with nearly impossible standards, he never shied away from telling someone what he thought, he thrived on problem solving, and was an insatiably curious man.
Have you considered the importance of curiosity as a leadership trait? Jobs’ interests were incredibly varied and included calligraphy, an interest that lead to the development of the iconic Apple fonts). Jobs said, “If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.”
Jobs became successful because he was curious about everything. He was not a specialist, but a generalist.
As a leader, you can’t be a specialist and expect to thoroughly understand your organisation. You need to be a generalist so you can spot connections between seemingly random things, and let your creative juices flow without inhibition. Curiosity, not the status quo, produces the greatest creative business insights.
Life is a jigsaw puzzle of experiences, knowledge and ideas, and each person’s puzzle is completely unique. You may not always think there’s a relationship between certain pieces, until one day it suddenly hits you… and you discover a practical application. I’m not talking about just product innovation – this also applies to working smarter, not harder, in any industry.
On some level, everything is related to everything. The more knowledge you can acquire, the more connections you can see, and you open your mind to previously unheard-of solutions.
A leader who is stuck in doing things the tried-and-true way is only limiting his or her organisation’s success. Yes, tried-and-true works, but does it adapt? Does it keep up with a rapidly changing world? Is it still relevant?
I encourage you to be exuberantly curious, like you were as a child. Don’t worry if curiosity has been schooled out of you. Some psychologists believe that only 2% of adults can think outside their box, meaning they have given up curiosity in favour of conformity. Give curiosity a chance to come back and you will be shocked at how quickly you will spark creativity.
Here is how curiosity will completely change the way you do business:
- Curiosity helps you seize the initiative – if only to answer, “I wonder what would happen if…?”
- Curiosity makes you coachable. Nothing is more career- and revenue-limiting than a know-it-all attitude!
- Curiosity helps you create jobs or niches to attend to new problems that aren’t within the scope of traditional positions.
- Curiosity helps you anticipate needs, challenges and solutions, and stay one step ahead of your competition, and even one step ahead of your customers.
The world is your playground. Explore it, in real life and virtually, and let your amazing brain create associations that bring about those powerful life-changing “aha” moments in your personal life and in business.