The Friday Thing #710

Lots of love for REM last week…

The Friday Thing #710 switches gears a bit against the backdrop of a job change for me. Over the last few years, I have spent a good amount of time talking with people inside and outside of Microsoft about storytelling and culture change. Though they’re two different topics, they’re also very connected. So much so that in driving culture change at Microsoft, we adopted a framework from Carolyn Taylor’s 2005 book, Walking the Talk: Building a Culture for Success, and added storytelling to her framework of behaviours, symbols and systems.

?Often when I present, especially about storytelling, but often about culture, I am asked what I look for when hiring new members for my team. You may think the answer would be that we hire people who are great storytellers (we do) or journalists (we do) or editors (you get the idea)….but the way I answer this question is that I always look to hire people with curiosity. Thus, as I thought about this week’s Friday Thing, it game me reason to research and explore curiosity a bit more. In doing so, I came across a great piece from the Royal Society of the Arts, of which I am a member, which looked at curiosity through the lens of energy and climate change. A bit of an odd entry point I thought, but also useful for my new job. The paper, RSA 1641 is very much worth a read.

It has some wonderful definitions of curiosity such as the quote and table below:

“Curiosity is the very basis of education, and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly.”?Arnold Edinborough.?

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And this more academic approach that posits a matrix of curiosity.

On one axis lies Epistemic curiosity, which is the desire for information and knowledge, and Perceptual curiosity, which describes one’s attention to novel objects in their immediate environment. The other axis runs from Specific curiosity, which is the desire for a particular piece of knowledge such as the final piece of a puzzle, to Diversive curiosity, which is less directed and would describe seeking stimulation to escape boredom or when ready to grow. It is important to grasp that these contrasts are not zero-sum, and one can grow in epistemic curiosity without losing perceptual curiosity, and, as we will show, it is possible, indeed desirable to have both convergent (specific curiosity) and divergent (diversive curiosity) thinking for innovative solutions to emerge

All of this gave me reason to pause and think about my own curiosity and this notion of Growth Mindset we have adopted at Microsoft. I looked at this through a different lens to RSA – that being my search history over the last week. In some ways, it’s an indicator of my curiosity. Here are just some of the things I searched for this week (on Bing):

Section 230, Belt and Road, Gary Indiana, autarky, David Carson, Westphalia, CMA, DMU, Macallan, Mont Ventoux.

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What this shows you (a bit) is what is on my mind as I enter my new job, but also how my mind works these days. When I come across words such as autarky that I am aware of but not fully familiar with, I immediately look it up. Same with a concept, or brand. Ditto on belt and road and the designer David Carson. This is not my full search history for the week but hopefully you get the idea. Years ago, I read a great piece in Wired about the Internet being my “offboard brain” where I can ‘store things’ that my memory doesn’t have capacity for – but it’s also an incredible resource to feed a curious mind. Of course, that is stating the obvious, but it also reminded me that there is a reason I still print things out on paper to read and then mark them up to research further. Because the hyperlink both giveth and taketh one's attention on the rabbit hole infested Internet.

But back to hiring….I have an idea I talk about in interviews, two in fact, that try to make this point. The first is about sailing – of which I know very little. But imagine you were stood on the shoreline watching flotilla of sailboats all heading in one direction – yet there is one boat that is heading in the opposite direction to all others on the horizon. My sense is that skipper has sensed a change in the winds and has begun tacking in the opposite direction. They may be wrong (or potentially lost), but I want to talk to, and maybe hire, that skipper. Because they’re taking a calculated risk. They’re looking ahead with curiosity.

?The second analogy is walking down a busy street – lest say 5th Ave in New York or Oxford Street in London. There is a lot of visual and verbal noise here, so I am looking for the things that stand out – such as the store that opens at 6:59am vs 7am or the hidden doorway into a private viewing room or the store where Invader has placed a piece of his graffiti art. I’m looking for people who look for those things – who are looking to stand out from the crowd, in a subtle way. Because that is what communications is about these days. Capturing attention. In the past that meant a neon sign or a person with a sandwich board. In a world of paid media, everything is a neon sign of a sandwich board.

And with the talk of sandwiches, I am now hungry so that’s all I really have this week…just some thoughts on curiosity and a link to circuitous link back to RSA 1641 because as I explored my own curiosity about the word, I found this deep connection between curiosity, creative and innovation. All things that are of my mind right now…

I hope this all makes sense to someone out there…and am eager to hear your thoughts in the comments here...

Happy Friday,

-Steve