Curiosity killed the Cat?
We often live in fear of what could be around the corner, or what’s hiding in the unknown. This is mainly based on us wanting to maintain the status quo, especially when its’ not causing problems or it’s the reason why we have our current success. All businesses strive to create some order to have a level of consistency and reliability in what they do. This is mostly based on the Law of Pareto, where we know we can’t excel at everything, so let’s focus on the 20% of things that give us 80% of our success. Many managers are scared to tamper with this for the obvious reasons.
Today with the many disruptions we face in our events markets, we cannot afford to wait for the disruption, we go out and find it before it hits. This brings us to one of our principle values in the HISIDE Group…CURIOSITY.
Beyond Teambuilding pride ourselves in creating events, activities and challenges that push any team past mediocrity, allowing them to express themselves in a way that unleashes a team synergy that is often lying dormant. Our teambuilding is done in two definitive ways; formal and informal. Both have merit and are used to create the specific objectives of your particular team’s needs.
Curiosity
Noun
1.A strong desire to know or learn something
“filled with curiosity, the HISIDE team stalked the web for international trends.”
2.An unusual or interesting object or fact
“Through its curiosity, the HISIDE Group realised the impact of AI in the RSVP domain.”
In the past, this fear of the unknown has kept most from being curious. Often it’s a case of not really wanting to know what’s on the other side. It might be expensive, and it might be dangerous; it may mean having to act or do something! This curiosity has to be permitted and encouraged as it’s not for everyone to voluntarily try or do.
For this reason, we have learned to force the issue of curiosity in two ways:
- After every event, we complete a compulsory debrief where the good, the bad and the ugly are exposed and discussed. We look at what was planned, communicated, understood and executed. From this, we extract not only what we need to fix but more importantly, what opportunities exist if we do something differently.
- The company brainstorm is something everyone looks forward to, as follows unless of course you are not being invited! The process is simple, we take any regular processes or system, and we hypothetically ban its use, which means we have to find another way. This opens the field from the banal to the bizarre. There is no wrong answer; there are only answers which provide us with opportunities.
Most companies or teams will agree, this is a “no brainer”, but why does it not happen as a standard in most companies?
Sadly, the culture of the company is often driven by careful Management who only understand that “Curiosity killed the cat” whereas we can easily change this age-old quote to be “Curiosity allowed the cat to become a Lion.”
Quick Tips
- Allow your team to challenge the status quo by setting up formal times and meetings to do such.
- Introduce dysfunction into your business thinking
- Acknowledge new ideas
- Get rid of the “Yes…But” work vocabulary
John Ingram
Director of the HISIDE Group
