Heroes... and Curiosity

This is the 17th in a series of articles by The Golf Gadfly intended for anyone who is interested in the BUSINESS of golf. This one is a bit 'deeper' than most... I hope that piques your curiosity.

A coincidental melting pot of events led to this article.??I hope it will be meaningful to you, even though it doesn’t mention our favorite four letter word until the final thoughts.

This morning, I read a deeply moving tribute to Steve Jobs on the 10th?anniversary of his death written by Jony Ives, his closest collaborator at Apple.??That happened a few nights after someone close to me who never had the chance to meet my father asked me “What was your dad like?”??And in between as I was waiting in the airport to fly home to Minnesota I was looking in the airport bookstore for something to read and one of the books I paged through was a biography of Winston Churchill.

Those experiences so close together spurred a thought.??I don’t have many heroes, but if I had to skinny my list down to three the choice wouldn’t be hard… my dad, Winston Churchill and Steve Jobs.

My dad gave me a daily lesson in how to live a joyful and meaningful life… and then far too soon he showed me how to die with dignity and courage.??I never met Churchill and probably have a flawed understanding of him based on the biases of his biographers, but I figure that if saving the free world from tyranny doesn’t make you a hero then there is no such thing.??And Steve Jobs is my business hero… he set an insanely high bar for those of us who seek to generate useful innovation for the world through our commercial activities.

If you haven’t read the Wall Street Journal piece called “Jony Ive on What He Misses Most About Steve Jobs”, go find it and digest it.??There are dozens of profound thoughts to savor, but my favorite passage focused on the curiosity that was Jobs’ signature characteristic… Ives also referred to it as his “inquisitiveness’.

“I believe that after a traditional education, or working in an environment with many people, curiosity is a decision requiring intent and discipline.??In larger groups our conversations gravitate towards the tangible, the measurable.??It is more comfortable, far easier and more socially acceptable talking about what is known.??Being curious and exploring tentative ideas were far more important to Steve than being socially acceptable.??Our curiosity begs that we learn.??And for Steve, wanting to learn was far more important than wanting to be right.”

By now you may be wondering what on earth any of this has to do with the business of golf.??I am now approaching the end of my first decade working in and paying attention to the golf industry.??One of my most painful observations about the golf industry has been the lack of curiosity exhibited by many industry participants.??Don't get me wrong... I am not saying that no one in the golf industry has curiosity… but I am saying that curiosity is in shorter supply here than I found it to be in other industries that I have participated in during my business career such as broadcasting, financial services, health care and passenger airlines.

Much of the golf industry operates as though it believes the old conventional wisdom that ‘curiosity killed the cat’.??But like a lot of conventional ‘wisdom’, that is the opposite of the truth… in fact, it is lack of curiosity that kills many cats in the business world.

Don’t boast about your 30 years of experience if it is in fact one year of experience repeated 30 times.??Think outside the box.??Be curious.??Try it… you just might like it.