Build #46 - the case for curiosity

Hello,

I hope your week’s going well so far.

In this week’s Build I’m asking you to take a step back and join me in an exploration of why curiosity matters.

Our life experience shapes who we are and the way we work.

It strongly influences the way we perceive those around us and our interactions with them.

Yet we rely too much on our experience and this leads us to make flawed decisions. Psychologists Emre Soyer and Robin Hogarth have a great book about this called The Myth of Experience.

While I was reading The Myth of Experience, I was struck by a distinction it drew between two types of learning environments.

A “kind” learning environment is where there are predictable, recurring patterns. It’s often quite constrained or structured.

That means that when you make a change, the result or feedback from that change is pretty immediate and obvious.

In a business setting this might be a checkout at a supermarket - where the variables are quite locked down and everyone knows the rules of the game. If you change something you can predict what’s going to happen pretty reliably.

But those kinds of environment are pretty rare in start-up and scale-up businesses.

Instead we’re dealing with what Soyer and Hogarth call “wicked” learning environments.

Here a lot of the information that we need to understand the impact of a change is hidden.

The impact or feedback from a change is often subject to a long time delay, infrequent, confusing or simply non-existent.

That sounds like pretty much every day for founders growing their businesses.

So as I work with founders to navigate wicked learning environments, I observe them doing so with differing degrees of success.

I notice that those founders that thrive are relentlessly curious about what is happening in and around their businesses.

They create a culture of curiosity where little is taken for granted.

Unsaid assumptions are dragged into the daylight, challenged and tested. Previously accepted thoughts are looked at with fresh eyes and new perspectives.

And there’s solid academic research that backs up what I see in my work with founders too.

The very best founders learn when to do deploy curiosity to avoid getting overly stuck on a particular decision.

They know when to accept prior wisdom and move on. And they develop a sense of when it’s time to dig deeper and be curious about what’s really going on.

My absolute favourite way of putting this curiosity into practice is the “five whys”. It’s super simple yet always yields new insights.

Get the right group of people with diverse perspectives together around a particular topic or problem, ask the “five whys” and you’ll get a new perspective to help you navigate that wicked learning environment.

Be willing to listen and explore your business from new perspectives.

One founder I work with diarises “learning walks” with his team members. This creates space for different dialogues that explore things that the founder hasn’t seen or has made ill-informed assumptions about.

And it’s great for engagement too. Team members feel genuinely listened to and it shapes a culture where different voices are valued.

So my challenge to you is to take a few minutes today and reflect on your use of curiosity.

What assumptions have you made this week so far that might have benefitted from more curiosity?

Have you created meaningful contexts in the rollercoaster of scale-up growth for curious exploration?

And how might you signal to team members that curiosity-led challenge is valued and welcome in your business?

Have a curious week.

best,
-sw

ps I’m pretty excited. I’m very close to unveiling a new venture with a long-time collaborator that blends deep founder psychology and hands-on company building to help founders build their businesses, their way. If you interested hit reply and I’ll give you a little preview.