Curiosity might have killed the cat but a lack of it kills an organisation

Welcome to the 72nd edition of Leading with Empathy. In this edition we explore curiosity, a critical element of empathy and its power to change companies and people. I also share three book recommendations that I hope you will enjoy!

The Mistake That Made Millions

In 1968, Dr Spencer Silver was on a mission to make it stick. As a chemist, he was constantly working with different chemicals in a search for a super strong glue, something that would be easy to apply yet bind surfaces quickly and assuredly.?

Initially he was pretty sure he'd failed. The glue he created was easy to apply, reusable and cheap but sadly it had a very low adhesive strength. Attempting to create a super strong glue resulted in quite the opposite.?

In many organisations, the story would stop here. The invention was a failure, toss it in the trash and get back to the drawing board… but not at 3M. Dr Silver spent the next few years speaking, showcasing and discussing with many people in the company the findings and properties of his glue. 3M know that the binary worlds of success and failure are too blunt to foster invention. Between a yes and a no sits a maybe. The culture and leadership of 3M were comfortable with Silver and his new glue staying in the land of maybe. In fact, it was okay to stay there for seven years until Art Fry came along.

Art heard about Dr Silver’s adhesive at a conference and it got him thinking about a problem he had been experiencing. Art sang in a local choir and found it tricky to keep his bookmarks in place. Maybe Silver’s weak adhesive could do the trick. He and Silver started playing around with the glue and paper. They found it not only effective at holding paper together lightly, but that it was easy to remove and reposition the paper if adjustment was required.

Post-it notes are now a standard fixture in the stationery cupboards and on Boardroom walls across the world. Billions of these semi-sticky squares, in a variety of colours and shapes are used each year. This multi-million dollar industry was not the result of a brilliant strategy, a well identified market problem followed by years of research and development. It wasn’t the genius of vision and foresight, no.?

Post It notes were a mistake. It was a failed invention that was allowed to stay alive long enough to become a sensation. It was possible not because of the genius of either Silver or Fry, but because they both lived and worked in an environment, within a culture, that encouraged and supported curiosity. They were both able to ask open questions. Pitch unusual and seemingly useless ideas. Collaborate on these ideas and play with potential. Innovators alone are not enough, innovators need a safe and encouraging habitat in which they can grow.

It required people around them to listen. It required these people to experience the very natural twinges of doubt and the immediate instinct to say ‘no’, but then to park that instinct and let the idea live. To suspend both the fear and judgement and instead share in the uncertainty and curiosity. Embrace the curious possible in the face of the likely failure. Do this long enough and Post It notes will likely turn up in your workplace too.?

The ideas are created by the innovators, but they can’t do it alone. They need followers, cheerleaders, supporters and people to provide air cover. The innovative ideas need to be tested, fostered and scaled. The take time. The greatest risk to innovation in most companies is not the lack of smart people with good ideas.?

It a culture of ruthless excellence, obsessively focused on eliminating anything that isn’t immediately applicable. A culture of clear return on investment before a stone is turned. It is leaders who are ruthlessly focused on the next quarters results and people with no patience for dumb questions and time to play. Thankfully, Art Fry and Dr. Silver didn’t live in such an environment. Hopefully, the innovators in your organisation don’t have to either.

Even with examples like Post-it notes, many organisations fail to nurture curiosity at scale. They don’t connect into the incredible capability of their greatest resource: Their people. They miss out on by failing to foster an organisational culture of curiosity instead focusing on certainty and rigidity. Few companies are able to harness the immense power of their people.?

The human brain is the most complex system in the known Universe. Each person's brain contains around 85 billion neurons, connected in trillions of complex pathways, all different, unique and immensely powerful. The incredible thing about humans is our ability to construct complex ideas and share them. When we fail to embrace curiosity as a way we do things, we reduce our shared mental capacity.

It is quite natural to reject curiosity. Being curious is dangerous. When two men, let's call them Cautious Man and Curious Man, walked through the jungles of modern India 3,000 years ago and heard a rustle in the bushes they acted differently. Cautious Man had heard the village elders talk about tigers since he was a small boy. These stories struck fear into his heart and had often begun with a rustle in the bushes. Based on this instinct to trust what he already believed, Cautious Man immediately turned and ran.

Curious Man on the other hand wasn't moved. He too had heard the stories of the tigers, but his brain was wired differently. He chose to challenge the things he heard and saw. He was constantly questioning the world and so the rustle might be many things, a tiger is one of any number of possibilities. He thought it better to move toward the bushes and check it out.

There wasn’t always a tiger, but when there was, only one man made it back to camp. Only one man got to continue passing on his genes. Cautious is safer than curious. Cautious people lived longer and had more babies. We are all descendants of Cautious Man. It is the default way our brains are wired. It takes work to change this wiring.

This is why building a curious culture can be so hard. The ability for people to ask curious questions doesn't come easy, especially in a complex and uncertain world. Especially when people in a position of power say not to. It's safe not to rock the boat. It's natural to accept the status quo.

This is why leadership is critical. Those leaders that can foster curiosity by encouraging experimentation, rewarding thoughtful failure, and creating time for teams to explore new ideas drive greater innovation. Curiosity is not just a nice-to-have; it’s a critical ingredient for innovation. Leaders must actively create environments where curiosity thrives, risks are embraced, and ideas have room to grow. Only then can organisations harness the immense power of their people’s creativity. Do you have enough curiosity in your culture?

Don't miss the chance to kick off 2025 with some development

Great Reads

I churn through a lot of books each year and often am asked to recommend some titles. So here are three brilliant books I'd recommend you to pick up and why...

Nexus - Yuval Noah Harari

This is an incredibly well thought out and brilliantly written exploration of not only the future of computers & AI, but also a deep analysis of how we work as groups of humans to build, share and collate information. From telling stories around camp fires to the way algorithms accelerated ethic cleansing, this is a must read for everyone... I mean everyone!

Tribal Leadership -?David Logan, John King

If you are interested in why a team culture is the way it is, you need to look not only at the people, but what they say and do. This brilliant book examines the language people use and the indications of the internal narrative they put themselves in. This is a great read for both self-awareness and team development and would recommend all people leaders to check it out.

Greenlights - Matthew McConaughey

Unlike the other two, this autobiography won't share sociological research or organisational behaviour, but if you are like me and enjoy audiobooks, this might be one of the best I've come across. McConaughey's storytelling is beautiful, his self-reflections raw and open, and his southern twang adds so much to the incredible journey he unpacks. Great for a long road trip!

That's it for this edition folks, please like, comment, share... or just give me a sign that someone is actually reading this ????????????

With empathy,

Daniel