I recently had a conversation with a friend about curiosity. She said that curiosity was innate, but often required inspiration.
She explained: “After breakfast yesterday, my kids asked what we were going to do for the day. With lots of enthusiasm, I said, ‘We are going on a NATURE WALK!’ The kids grumbled and groaned and I may have heard the word boring, but I ignored them.
We drove to a nearby trail to start our walk. After a few minutes, the kids started pointing out sounds, sights and smells. They asked questions. We wandered off the trail to explore. We found bugs, moss, birds, butterflies. It was great, but their curiosity did not spark until we were in the midst of nature.”
So, how do you spark your BA curiosity?
It’s easy to be curious in the midst of nature, but how do you cultivate curiosity in your cube, during an endless meeting or on a conference call.
“The power of curiosity is to make the mundane character of the present more interesting.”
-Craig Dykers via Forbes’ Patrick Hanlon
Here are three ways to make the mundane more interesting. Try them and you will demonstrate leadership, inspire creativity and promote innovation.
- Keep up to date on industry happenings and think about how they could impact your work. Would the impact be positive or negative? What would change? How could your organization capitalize on the industry happening?
- Create a list of “pondering” questions and use at least one each time you meet with a stakeholder. A few examples: How do you think it evolved to this? What would happen if? Why is this important to you? What does success look like?
- Use the 5 Whys technique. Ask a “why” question. Determine the answer. Then, use that answer to develop a new “why” question. Continue this pattern (usually at least five times) until you discover the root cause of the problem.
“Curiosity is more important than knowledge.” -Albert Einstein