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The Power of Curiosity
Francesca Gino, a professor at Harvard Business School, shares a compelling business case for curiosity. Her research shows allowing employees to exercise their curiosity can lead...
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Francesca Gino, a professor at Harvard Business School, shares a compelling business case for curiosity. Her research shows allowing employees to exercise their curiosity can lead to fewer conflicts and better outcomes. However, even managers who value inquisitive thinking often discourage curiosity in the workplace because they fear it’s inefficient and unproductive. Gino offers several ways that leaders can instead model, cultivate, and even recruit for curiosity. Gino is the author of the HBR article “The Business Case for Curiosity.”
CURT NICKISCH: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Curt Nickisch.
In 2011, a fourteen-year-old Chinese-American girl named Clara Ma walked into a high-tech laboratory in California. She was wearing a white outfit with a mask and gloves to protect against contamination. Then she leaned over a piece of space-age machinery costing two-point-five billion dollars, and she pulled out a permanent pen.
CLARA MA: I signed my name in English, and I decided to sign it in Chinese as well – in Mandarin – and I also wrote the word “curiosity.”
CURT NICKISCH: Curiosity. The name of NASA’s third Mars Rover. Clara had the honor of signing the rover, because she had suggested that name in an essay contest when she was 11 years old.
CLARA MA: The picture of curiosity that I had as a kid, was just one that involved asking a lot of questions. I’m an extremely, extremely inquisitive person! Like, people will get annoyed with me with how many questions that I ask.
CURT NICKISCH: The human trait of curiosity is universal in children. But it’s less common in adults and often hard to find in the workplace. The fear being that curiosity cripple your career by leading you out of line. However, new research shows that curiosity can drive an organization’s performance. It improves engagement and collaboration and inspires novel solutions.
Here to talk about the performance power of curiosity and what managers can do to bolster it is Francesca Gino. She’s a professor at Harvard Business School and the author of the article, “The Business Case for Curiosity.” It’s in the September-October 2018 issue of Harvard Business Review. Francesca, thanks so much for coming on the show.
FRANCESCA GINO: Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
CURT NICKISCH: Why are children so good at curiosity?
FRANCESCA GINO: We are all born with a lot of curiosity and in fact, if you look at the data, curiosity peaks at the age four and five, then unfortunately declines steadily from there. And having children, I can totally see it – it’s constant wondering, constantly exploring and the type of questioning [that] never ends is: Why is the sky blue? Why do we have to pay receipts for stuff or why is it that we need to wear clothes when we get out of the house? And after learning more about curiosity, I try to be more careful about ways in which I can encourage it rather than shutting it down, given what the data suggests.
CURT NICKISCH: Starting at five years old or you’re thinking like, five years into your job?
FRANCESCA GINO: Starting earlier. So when I think about moments where I see a lot of curiosity, the thing that comes to mind is 6:00 AM in our kitchen. So the children are usually running around from cabinet to cabinet, opening them up, trying to look for interesting things. And I used to stop them because I was fundamentally worried that we would have a lot of mess or that I would arrive late at work.
And nowadays, instead, I either sit down, sip my coffee and just enjoy watching them having fun exploring, or I join in on the exploration, asking them questions about the things that they found. And I have to tell you things don’t end up in mess – most of the time. I think there was an exception with my 14-month-old daughter finding the salt and the little bottle was open, so she was shaking it around the kitchen, like a priest, and a little bit of salt ended up on the floor.
But again, the entertainment value was much higher. And it’s interesting because the fear I felt of ending up in a mess, it’s a fear that I’ve seen in a lot of leaders who want to stop explorations because they think is going to get in the way of efficiency or is going to lead to a mess.
CURT NICKISCH: That’s true to some extent though, right?
FRANCESCA GINO: Well, in organizations that really foster curiosity, it’s pretty clear to people when it is that it’s time to ask questions, to really wonder, to explore and when it’s time to put our heads down and just execute on the work. So I have not seen organizations getting in trouble for encouraging curiosity when it’s done well.
CURT NICKISCH: So you have to be willing to clean up the salt, but you’re not going to get the benefits of it without doing that…
FRANCESCA GINO: You need to start from a mindset that shutting down curiosity leads to problems, and it’s costly to both the individuals, but also for the organization that are reaping the benefits of curiosity. And that shift in mindset as an important first step. And when it’s there, you can be clear on when and how curiosity is valued. And also making sure that if people explore, the explorations are intelligent ones.
So one example that comes to mind is Intuit. Intuit has innovation awards that they give to people every year, and these are for explorations that led to some interesting new products or new processes. They also have failure awards, and these go to explorations that did not lead to new products, but in fact led to important learnings for the team. And what’s interesting about this example is that the failure awards come with a failure party.
And so you get the sense that exploration – when it’s intelligent exploration – even if it leads to failure, is something that the company values.
CURT NICKISCH: It’s interesting hearing you talk about curiosity and you also use words like exploration, wonder, and part of what makes this so difficult is because you’re sort of at the intersection of people and also organizations, right? So certain people can be explorer types where others are more like driver types. And so, you know, fostering curiosity in certain people might be easier than in others. And then of course you have this added layer of just getting the organization to go, and we all know we want diversity, and we all known we want creativity, but what are the things that stop us from getting there?
FRANCESCA GINO: So you’re right that some of us are naturally more curious than others. And so when we think about organizations or leaders really encouraging curiosity, some people might need an extra or bigger push than others. But despite the fact that by default we come to the table where the more or less curiosity, encouraging it is possible. And that’s often what leaders forget. That no matter what your tendencies are, there is something that I can do as a leader – whether starting by modeling behavior or really thinking carefully about the environment that I’m putting you in – what it is that I can do to make sure that even the people who might not be as naturally curious, feel and get the benefit of curiosity.
It’s not often talked about as much as creativity or innovation and there is a difference there. In fact, one of the things that we know about curiosity is that it’s key to creativity, it’s key to innovation. And so for organizations and leaders out there who want to foster innovation and creativity constantly in their organizations, curiosity is a good way to get there.
CURT NICKISCH: Yeah, you wrote in your article, you gave the example of Edwin Land’s daughter, who as a three year old, asked why she had to wait for film to get processed and that question led to the innovation of fast-developing film, right? An instant camera. One other positive outcome that you saw in your research is that with greater curiosity in organizations, there was actually less conflict and that seemed like it didn’t make sense. It seems counterintuitive.
FRANCESCA GINO: Thank you for pointing out that my research doesn’t make sense.
CURT NICKISCH: Right, sorry.
FRANCESCA GINO: Well, let’s see if I can help with bringing that to a little bit more sense, if you will. What is interesting about curiosity, if you think about it in a team context, is that I’m much more likely to ask questions, I’m much more open to a different view on the same task or problems. And what that does is allowing us to have more of an open mind conversation about what problem we’re trying to solve or how to get to the solution. And so what you end up with is less conflict just because there is more openness to other people’s perspective.
And so, we’re are better at taking other people’s perspective. We’re better at saying how is this issue – how is it that others could view it from a different standpoint? And so that’s why you ended up seeing less conflict in a way that improves performance if we’re working together in teams and also improves our decision making.
CURT NICKISCH: Let’s talk a little bit about with all these benefits, and if curiosity is kind of a key ingredient for innovation and growth and being competitive, why there isn’t more of it and why it’s hard to bring into organizations? Where were the stumbling blocks?
FRANCESCA GINO: We often have the wrong mindset, when we think about the value that curiosity can bring to us and to our organization. We tend to believe that letting people explore, letting people be curious, comes at the cost of efficiency. So stuff is not going to get done if you’re there exploring. Or, if you think about encouraging curiosity in a meeting, then the meeting is going to take three hours rather than one hour because we’re not going to get to a conclusion.
And as I said earlier, this is actually the wrong mindset. There is no evidence from organizations I’ve studied that suggests that when you allow curiosity to stay alive, that efficiency becomes a problem, that somehow people are less productive.
CURT NICKISCH: Yeah, there definitely is this conflict between efficiency and exploration. There’s also, just for individuals, a sense of whether or not there’s psychological safety to say things, right? Because even your article here – I’m looking at the print version of your article in the magazine – and there’s a picture of a cat with a Kleenex box, a tissue box on its head. Which we laugh at now, you’re smiling now, right? And none of us at work want to look like that cat, because everybody’s laughing at the cat: “Oh, it’s just an empty box. Isn’t that silly? Isn’t that funny?”
And there is a sense of vulnerability somehow to ask a question like, “I wonder?” because it seems like you’re admitting that you don’t know that. And so, how can you get over that so that you really do foster curiosity in a way that it’s gonna move your team or organization forward?
FRANCESCA GINO: One of the ways in which that can be done is that something that comes from a core principle of improv comedy – this idea of the “Yes, and.” And it’s a core principle and a really important one that teaches you to always add your questions or your contributions or an additional sentence after the “yes.”
And that’s important because you’re starting from a point of acceptance, so you’re not being threatening to other people. It’s much easier to come into the conversation when you accept what’s there, and the “and” adds to it in a way that might take the scene in a totally different direction, but helps you bring in your contributions.
So often organizations have used similar procedures, like an organization that comes to mind is Pixar Animation Studios. They use a similar technique they call it “Plus-ing” because you’re always adding on. And at the very basic, plus-ing is using the “Yes, and.”
CURT NICKISCH: These seem like some of the same best practices that we would hear if we’re talking about empathy or brainstorming – like write every idea on the board, don’t not write something up there, and decide at that point that it’s not a good idea. One other term that I really liked in the article was “intellectual humility,” right? That that’s another way of expressing your ability to ask more questions. And so, how important is curiosity in the sort of cocktail of, you know, positive traits and outlooks that well-performing teams have?
FRANCESCA GINO: When we approach decisions in life or at work with curiosity, we’re something from an assumption that we don’t have the answer and we are ready to learn. And what that means is that we are approaching the same situations with a lot of intellectual humility. The two often go together for the very fact that they require explorations, and they start from the assumptions that we still don’t have that knowledge.
And what is interesting is that intellectual humility is something that despite the fact that we have a lot of experience, a lot of knowledge, a lot of skills, it allows us to always stay focused on what’s left to learn.
CURT NICKISCH: How important is the leader there?
FRANCESCA GINO: It is quite important. I think leaders that can set the way by giving the right examples – so being the first one asking questions like, “Why do we do it this way?” or “What if we were to look at the situation differently?” People are paying attention to what the leader is doing and so those are small ways in which they might feel that curiosity is encouraged in the team or in the workplace more generally.
Having said that, I have the chance to talk to a lot of employees across organizations that are unsure about whether the top leadership is really encouraging curiosity and my answer there is to start small. Still ask questions in a polite and respectful way, if you think that there is a different way of looking at a problem or approaching a decision. It’s not threatening when the approach is a respectful one.
CURT NICKISCH: Yeah. The worry there is that if the CEO may not be exhibiting those behaviors or senior leaders are not, that the people who look up to those or report to those people aren’t going to value it either. And so the first people to hear some of those ideas will be, you know, your manager or your skip-level manager. So, what do you tell people who feel like the people directly above them may not welcome that and are just thinking about, you know, making sure that they can show that their team is performing well.
FRANCESCA GINO. So what I tell them usually in situations like that is to think about ways in which in the small [scale], they can start adopting strategies that are going to allow them to stay curious. So one of them, which I think is simple to adopt, even if you don’t have a boss that agrees with itt, is having learning goals in addition to performance goals.
Another one is to find ways to broaden your interests, maybe outside of work. Again, better if it’s the top leadership or the CEO directly who are supporting the idea, but even if that’s not the case, you’re not going to be disruptive in bad ways to the workplace, if you yourself thought about ways in which you could do just that.
CURT NICKISCH: Francesca, you said that teams – or people – just have a really good sense of knowing like, okay, this is a time for exploration and now that we’ve decided what to do, this is the time to get the work done. But for leaders who were worried about exploring stuff too much or asking too many questions or testing and experimenting too many things, how do you know when it’s time to say this is to be decisive? Like, what’s the magic balance there?
FRANCESCA GINO: When I think about the way we usually think about leadership or leaders more specifically, we seem to think in terms of a dichotomy, where on one side you’re the leader who is always asking questions, really trying to get the input from everybody at the table – or you’re the person who is very dictatorial. Maybe you’re not asking a lot of questions and you’re the one making the calls. And in reality, leaders can do both.
So they can decide when it’s the time where they really need the information, they need people to bring out ideas, new perspectives, and then once they are informed – or if there is a little really a lot of time pressure that they’re under – they’re the one making the call. So the two are not necessarily inconsistent.
Now, some people might say, “Okay, I seem to be doing too much of the questioning. I might be the one actually slowing things down.” As a leader, I think it’s important to be clear and transparent on when it is that we’re going to explore, ask questions, experiment, and when instead it’s time to in fact make decisions and move forward.
And that is something that I saw in a lot of leaders in a lot of organizations that in fact encourage curiosity. There is much more clarity and transparency about places in which you’re just putting your head down and going ahead with the decisions or executing on the task – versus staying curious and exploring.
CURT NICKISCH: Well, we’ve talked about how leaders can model it and then some of the barriers that are there for just kind of spreading that down through teams. But what other tactics can you take from an organizational perspective that are beyond leadership?
FRANCESCA GINO: So one is to think about it right from the start, right at the beginning of the employment relationship. And what that means is to hire for curiosity – or at least ask questions during the interviews that get at curiosity. So some people say: “Oh, sometimes in interviews I’ve been asked questions about my personal interests outside of work.” As it turns out, that’s a question that can help us understand whether a person is curious or not. Or a student of mine a while back told me that in an interview he was asked what he would do if he was on an assignment in a different city, arrived at the hotel – would he have dinner in the hotel or explore?
And again, that might be a really strange question, but one that helps you understand whether the person is naturally more or less curious.
CURT NICKISCH: You also mentioned in your article how Google put up a billboard with basically a little bit of a riddle to solve, but it wasn’t even associated with Google. It was just a question on a billboard along a highway. And they used that as a recruiting technique.
FRANCESCA GINO: That’s right. The funny story about that example is that it was my husband telling me about what it meant. At some point I saw the board the billboard in Harvard Square and not even wondered. And it was not a moment of pride since I thought of myself as a naturally curious person. And it’s an interesting example of how a company is really interested in hiring curious individuals and where that is valued.
Try to figure out a method – a little bit unusual to see if by seeing something on a board you would be triggered to go find the answer for it. And so engineers or other people who in fact understood that that was a riddle, explored it and every time they found the answer to the riddle, that was another one that the company presented to them. And after a while you would end up with the opportunity to upload your resume to see if you would get an interview at Google.
CURT NICKISCH: That’s amazing. It sounds also very smart in the sense that they selected potentially for the type of sort of analytical minds that they were looking for, right?
FRANCESCA GINO: That’s right.
CURT NICKISCH: Right, so it’s not necessarily a black mark on your curiosity, but different companies could look at that some way and say, “How would we do that for the type of people we’re looking for?”
FRANCESCA GINO: That’s right. A different company had thought about it a little bit differently. So they’re in a totally different industry, they are a fast-food chain. And when the CEO interviews candidates, especially when the candidates come in and they’re going to be in a role equivalent to a general manager of a store.
He has books on his desk, and he has multiple appointments with the candidates that are being interviewed. And one of the things that he’s looking for is whether the person who’s in front of his eyes has the curiosity of looking at the book and saying, “Oh, I wonder what the CEO is reading?” And actually explore and read the book prior to the next appointment.
CURT NICKISCH: Oh, that’s great. Yeah.
FRANCESCA GINO: So very subtle, but quite interesting.
CURT NICKISCH: What other neat ways have you come across that in your research and your work, where you found organizations doing a good job of sort of fostering and celebrating curiosity in their workforces?
FRANCESCA GINO: So one other strategy is this idea of broadening employees interests. And again, organizations can do this quite differently. One of my favorite examples is an example that is a bit dated, but is about the first manufacturer of typewriters in Italy. This is a time – we are back in the 1930s and 1940s – where every organization is very focused on how to get the most out of people.
So it was the time of Taylor and Fordism. And yet, this CEO – his name is Adriano Olivetti – took over for his father. He did that after being in the factory – so really seeing the experience of working there, right on the manufacturing floor. And what he decided to do is, one, make the working day shorter rather than longer; and two, he actually extended the time for lunch.
So from one hour he went to two hours and he used to say to the first hour was to eat lunch and the second hour was to eat culture. So he would have novelists, poets, musicians come in right after lunch and give talks or play music as a way to broaden the interest of the people working there.
Another great example from Olivetti, this company that thought really carefully about keeping curiosity alive, was the following one. At some point some workers went to the CEO and said, “There is a person who is stealing, you should fire him.” And they saw this worker leaving the factory on multiple occasions with pieces of iron and other materials directly from the factory. And the CEO, rather than firing the guy, decided to have a meeting with him. And at the end of the meeting –
CURT NICKISCH: Which is an example of curiosity…
FRANCESCA GINO: That’s exactly right. So the leader deciding to explore rather than just make a decision. And at the end of the meeting, the guy left with a promotion. So he had been promoted to be head of production of a new process.
So he discovered during the meeting that this guy was bringing pieces of materials home because he didn’t have time to experiment at work. And so he was doing that at night and over the weekends. And so it’s just a great example of rather than taking a suggestion for granted, fire the worker, you explore it and you start asking question to the person and then you are actually allowing him to have more time to explore his interest.
And what that led to was the invention of a machine that was one of the most successful products for Olivetti. In fact, at the time it was put on the market, it was selling at the same price of a Fiat Cinquecento, so a really high margin for the product.
CURT NICKISCH: Yeah, no kidding. That’s an amazing story. And the list of of products and companies and ideas that have walked out the doors of places because they haven’t had the freedom to explore their curiosity about something that’s related to the work that they were doing for the company, you know, is kind of a long list. When you think about all the time that companies try to come up with new ideas, or buy companies, the stuff that’s right in-house if you just let it go, it’s kind of amazing.
FRANCESCA GINO: And you’re right, it just started with curiosity on the part of the CEO when seeing something that looks strange, rather than just accepting the most obvious answer, go and explore and see if the intentions of the person actually were different.
CURT NICKISCH: What’s the biggest misunderstanding about curiosity that you think people have out there that you want to clear up?
FRANCESCA GINO: That fundamentally curiosity is messy. That it’s going to lead to explorations that have either no one or nothing productive coming out of them. I think that that is one of the issues and one of the barriers why we don’t see a lot of curiosity at work. And one of the reasons and big motivations for working on this article is that leaders often also don’t see the business case for it, so a lot of the research on curiosity is research that has taken place over the last decade or so, and so I think that leaders are still not aware of all the sorts of benefits that curiosity can bring about in the workplace.
CURT NICKISCH: Francesca, this has been super interesting. Thanks so much.
FRANCESCA GINO: Thank you so much for having me. It was a fun discussion.
CURT NICKISCH: That’s Francesca Gino. She’s a professor at Harvard Business School. She’s also the author of the article “The Business Case for Curiosity.” You can find it in the September-October 2018 issue of Harvard Business Review or at HBR.org.
This episode was produced by Mary Dooe. We get technical help from Rob Eckhardt. Adam Buchholz is our audio product manager.
Thanks for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. I’m Curt Nickisch.