The Importance of Curiosity For Organizational Survival
Ingredients to encourage curiosity with the Montessori method
An organization is a group of people who work together to envision a certain vision. Today, companies try to be innovative in offering solutions to customer problems. In order for the solutions to be used continuously by customers, the people in the organization should have a high willingness to learn and grow. That will eventually help the company to survive in the digital era.
The size of a company doesn’t matter anymore because any giant can fall behind if it moves too slowly. The curiosity of the people within the company is what creates the ability for the company to innovate, and therefore move faster than competitors.
When the company has clear goals and provides a safe environment to collaborate, employees will work autonomously to find ways to solve problems in order to achieve those goals. In finding ways to solve problems, curiosity is needed since it has some benefits to the company, which are:
#1 — High ownership.
Ownership is important because it gives employees a sense of autonomy. Instead of needing constant handrails, employees will focus on what the company as a whole needs rather than just what is asked of them. Curious people will actively take ownership to think about how to achieve a goal.
#2 — High-performance team.
Humans have limited time and minds to be able to do anything, but they have the ability to collaborate for the same goal. Curious people will wonder about the problems, learn why members have different views, and come up with solutions that consider the perspectives of all team members. As a result, the team would have stronger performance and better working relationships.
#3 — Incremental innovation.
To be successful at innovating, it usually takes a lot of experimentation. It sometimes requires employees to step outside their comfort zone, which can be scary for many of us. Curious people don’t give up easily when faced with failed experiments.
The bigger the organization, the more difficult it will be for the company to get those benefits. To achieve those benefits, discipline is required from everyone in the organization and the process is needed to be reviewed periodically to make it better in the future.
I feel grateful for this pandemic situation because I can work from home and this gives me the opportunity to observe the growth of my son who is still one year old. Since this is my first child and I have no experience in parenting, it makes me curious about parenting methods and I found the Montessori method.
Montessori is a method that emphasizes independence, provides freedom with limits, and respects the child’s natural psychological, physical, and social development. It was developed by an Italian doctor and educator, Maria Montessori. It makes me think that the child really likes to learn, make discoveries for themselves, and come up with creative solutions. Therefore, parents have an important role to encourage curiosity in the child.
Here are the three important ingredients to encourage curiosity that comes from the Montessori method and how it can be implemented in an organization:
#1 — Environment.
Montessori
Children have freedom of choice and movement. They can choose activities that they are interested in and learn to solve problems through play. Freedom does not mean being able to do anything. There are limits in the behavior and environment to keep the children safe, teach respect for others and the environment, and help them become human beings.
Organization
Leaders in the organization need to create a supportive environment by creating a collaborative culture, communicating the vision and mission, then finding and placing people in the right place so they can collaborate to solve problems towards that vision and mission.
#2 — Trust.
Montessori
The parent should trust that the children will develop on their unique path, in their unique way, and in a unique timeline. There is no need to force them to learn or to worry about them developing “differently” from their peers. There may be some accidents or mistakes along the way which cannot be prevented, but this is one of the learning parts, and it is the role of the parents to provide feedback and support.
Organization
When the goal is clear, leaders in organizations need to give trust to the team to explore how to solve problems. Leaders can focus on strategies for achieving goals, lead with questions, understand deeply the problems, and post-mortem without blame.
#3— Safety.
Montessori
The parent can provide physical and emotional safety. A physical safety environment can be built by childproofing the home, or at least one area so that the child can freely explore. Emotionally safety can be achieved by accepting who they are and they can trust the parents to be there even when they are having a hard time. This safety allows the child the freedom to be curious about the world.
Organization
The organization needs to create a safe environment to deal with facts and failures. Therefore, people will not hesitate to try to experiment, share about failures, learn from failures, and create innovations.
Final Words
Jim Collins explains in the book “Good to Great”: Successful and failed organizations often occur over a long period of time. Both outcomes occur only after accumulating a certain amount of positive or negative momentum. Positive or negative momentum is the outcome of people in the organization. The organization must be careful if negative momentum continues. It is important to think about “why?” and solve the root causes of negative momentum. Otherwise, the organization can slowly fail.
Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why. — Bernard Baruch
Curiosity is the basic human nature to survive since newborns. This makes humans have a strong desire to know or learn something new, so they wonder about the world and explore the environment. Ultimately, it is a human curiosity that establishes our civilization.
Thanks to My Wife & Tonito for giving feedback on the draft.
