Starting a New Year

Welcome to 2011!

Isn't it amazing that after all these years, some of the most simple concepts are still struggling to gain momentum in business? I'm not talking about complex variable analysis or other catch-phrases of business speak. I'm talking about stopping the insanity! Why, oh why, do businesses do the same thing, day over day, expecting a different result?

I have a theory that I'm happy to share!

If you have children, have ever been around children, or was once or currently are a child yourself, then you will know what I'm talking about. Remember the 3 year old asking a question?

"Daddy, why is the sky blue?"

"Well, because the sun is bright and hits particles in the atmosphere which spread the blue spectrum of light easily....blah blah blah."

In actuality, most of us answer something to try and get the "why" questions to stop. An interesting study said the following:

“When children received an explanatory response, they tended to elicit behavior that indicated that they were satisfied with the answer, like agreeing or asking a follow-up question. When children received a non-explanatory response, they tended to elicit behavior that indicated that they were not satisfied with the response, like asking the same question again or proposing their own answer to the question” -

Source: Frazier, B. N., Gelman, S. A., & Wellman, H. M., (2009). Preschooler’s search for explanatory information within adult-child conversation. Child Development, 80, 1592-1161.

So, after many of our "development years" searching for the answer to many questions, we grow up, enter the business world, and.... stop asking WHY and stop being curious!

It's time to recognize that "Curiosity Saves the Day"!

What ways do you, on a day-to-day environment, allow your employees to ask why and continue to ask why until they are satisfied with the response? How many times each day do you look at a process, a result, an outcome, and wonder why it happened, shrug it off and move on?

It's time for curiosity to take over our mindsets so we can continue to improve on the status quo and reduce waste, inefficiency and ultimately, innovate. We can only do that by re-discovering our 3-year old mentality of constantly asking "WHY?"