Innovation by design: the power of an inquisitive company culture

What does it mean to have a curious culture?

Curiosity is the desire to know and learn. Since the dawn of humankind, we’ve sought new and novel ways of doing things. The curiosity of early humans and our willingness to adapt to changing circumstances established our position as the dominant species.

Every historical, scientific, and societal breakthrough comes back to applied curiosity.

An inquisitive company culture manifests itself through a team’s ability to listen deeply, ask great questions, value diversity of thought, and capacity to innovate - finding creative solutions to complex problems.

Why does having a curious culture matter?

As they say, knowledge is power. Curiosity is what drives intuitive leaders to obtain that knowledge in the first place. Knowledge and analytical thinking equip a company to adapt to uncertain market conditions and respond resiliently to change.

Curiosity matters from a design thinking perspective because it’s about understanding a system from the viewpoint of its user. All design thinking begins with applied curiosity and a desire to understand, analyse and improve your people’s employee experience.

Applying curiosity ensures you give your team the tools they need to do their best work and enjoy the process of doing it, thus improving employee engagement, productivity, respect, and retention.

Curiosity matters from a personalisation perspective because an organisation’s ability to attract, curate, and engage its people is dependent on how well it knows, understands, and addresses their needs. To achieve the necessary level of insight requires curiosity.

Curiosity matters from an employee loyalty perspective because its application is what ensures employees have an outstanding experience. It empowers you to create a company culture that’s curious by design - that values its people, their unique perspectives, and individual contributions.

In essence, a high-performing, resilient business with an engaged, loyal workforce is a company’s return on its investment in curiosity.

The Challenges of a Curious Culture

Ask them, and many leaders will say they value curiosity. They recognise that exploration inspires creativity, innovation, and growth.

In practice, aspects of a company’s culture can undermine curiosity and exploration. 

The fast-paced working world requires us to be reactive and decisive, respond to challenging timeframes, and balance competing demands at speed.

Unsurprisingly, this kind of environment is not conducive to a more expansive, exploratory mindset. The pressure on employees to perform efficiently leaves little time to ask questions - even when those questions would yield better results in the medium and longer-term.

When a company’s culture prioritises efficiency over exploration, its ability to experiment, innovate and adapt is compromised. Its people become complacent. They settle for the first and quickest results-driven solution instead of the best.

In practice, leadership teams resist curiosity because of its uncertainty as a metric, its association with distraction, and the perceived risk of waste.

Diverting resources into something which may or may not yield positive results is a risk. While attention is otherwise occupied, the pressure to perform to existing parameters persists. 

However, it’s a delicate balance to strike. The price of not investing in curiosity is standing still at the expense of innovation. While investing in exploration that’s poorly defined or lacks boundaries is a waste of time, money, and resources.

It’s a leader’s responsibility to channel the curiosity of those around them to inspire creativity, foster innovation, and drive results. Therefore, a preferable course of action is to support your team’s success by creating and communicating clear parameters for your team to work within. This focuses their resources, attention, and minimises the likelihood of distraction.

Cultivating curiosity: The 4 principles of a curious culture

Humans are creatures of habit. When we become overly comfortable with our surroundings, we’re quick to fill gaps in our knowledge with assumptions (opinions disguised as truth that lead to problems later on), rather than slowing down, asking questions, and challenging the status quo. 

Zander Lurie, CEO of SurveyMonkey, puts it best: ‘when curiosity ebbs, people lapse into routine and complacency, which exposes a company to disruption.’

A curious culture has four core principles: psychological safety, an environment leads with learning over results, role modelling, and a clear sense of direction.

1. Psychological safety

It’s the role of every leader to create a workplace where their people feel supported, valued, and encouraged by management and one another. 

According to Amy Edmondson, the Harvard Business School Professor who coined the phrase, psychological safety means ‘a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes.’

Only when employees feel psychologically safe will they ask questions because neurobiologically, curiosity is exposing and opens us up to threat.

A psychologically safe environment encourages meaningful connections, thoughtful conversations, open questions, and honest collaboration between colleagues. As relationships develop, so do interests in each other’s disciplines. 

Psychological safety creates an environment where diversity of thought and alternative perspectives are welcomed and embraced - a place where curiosity can thrive.

2. A culture that celebrates learning over results 

Purely results-driven workplaces stifle creativity and quality of thought favouring short-term efficiency. Thinking in this way not only misses opportunities, but contributes to burnout, and disconnected and siloed teams. 

A learning focused employee experience prioritises effectiveness and offers longer-term benefit. Curiosity welcomes fresh perspectives and unlocks innovation. 

Giving employees an outlet for curiosity through a learning experience honours the individual’s development needs, while benefiting from the value associated with the process of upskilling, including increased employee motivation, morale, and performance. This is in part thanks to the brain chemistry dopamine, which is activated in the learning experience. In addition, the learning experience restores our biology to homeostasis, which displaces anxiety, depression, and creates a sense of energy and satisfaction. 

Directing an employee’s curiosity is a valuable mechanism to prevent and mitigate the effects of cognitive overload and burnout - a common problem faced by high-performing teams.

3. Leadership role modelling

A curious culture must start at the top of an organisation. Curiosity is a learned behaviour that people copy from people they admire. If leaders don’t model curiosity first, others won’t feel safe to question and challenge decisions.

You can encourage modelling in your team by showing your employees that you welcome and are open to asking and answering questions. Host listening groups, hold forums, run employee surveys, and encourage and recognise curiosity.

A logical place to begin your journey towards a curious culture is in your employee one-to-ones. Use open-ended coaching questions in your sessions to facilitate your team’s professional development. Help them identify where they are now, where they’d like to be, and support them to bridge the gap without telling them what to do to get there. Over time, you’ll see them modelling these practices in their working relationships.

4. A clear sense of direction

Without direction, curiosity can become a distraction. Channelling curiosity within specific parameters has mutual benefits for both employer and employee. 

From an employee perspective, understanding the scope within which they operate and are permitted to explore focuses on the task at hand while informing their learning and guiding their self-development goals.

For an employer, directed curiosity enables a company to create well workplaces and maintain a competitive edge in the human-led economy.

What next?

The working world as we know it is in flux with vast and simultaneous changes afoot in broader society post-pandemic. A culture of curiosity enhances our ability to problem solve and adapt in ever-changing markets.

Now is the time to embrace curiosity in the spirit of innovation.

The next time someone asks a question, don’t give them the answer. Give people the space to figure it out for themselves. Encourage them to explore the issue, unearth and acknowledge assumptions, and coach them to find their own creative solution.

At fluxfutures, we exist to ensure your employees have everything they need to do their best work through speaking, workshops, consultancy, and coaching.

We’ll support you with your company’s transition towards a curious culture.

Talk to us today about organising an inspiring talk for your next away day, a workshop for your senior leaders, or if you have something different in mind.