5 Reasons Curious Leadership Will Strengthen Your Organization

1. Exploring fills you with a sense of adventure, learning how things work and why they work that way makes your every cell in your body dance!
2. In your explorations, you turn things over and look underneath them.  You dig in the dirt and examine everything you find.
3. Squiggly things don’t scare you, they just make the adventure that much more exciting.   You don’t judge what you see as good or bad.  By instinct you simply seek first to understand, what it is, what it does, how it works, and why it works that way.
4. Unknown to you, your sense of adventure is making it easier for you to learn quickly.
5. And your enthusiasm is engaging others, causing them to want to explore with you.

In the book Good To Great, by Jim Collins -  Fred Purdue gives us this vision of leadership, “My job is to turn over rocks and look at the squiggly things, even if what you see can scare the h_ll out of you.”   However, as humans we tend to reflect this quote by Dave Ramsey, "We are all defensive of our mess."  

Instead of ignoring rocks, fearing the squiggly things that are beneath them, or defending your opportunities to improve, create a culture that encourages everyone to be explorers and to intentionally turn over rocks and examine those squiggly things.

Encouraging your people to be curious and to explore will unleash talents that are currently untapped and under-utilized.  Your organization will learn faster, become more customer service focused more employee centered and more prosperous.

Your Adventure Begins By Looking Under A Few Rocks:  

1.  When was the last time you spoke directly with your customers about your organization and listened for opportunities to improve their experience?
2. When was the last time you spoke directly with your front line employees about your organization and listened for ways to better support them?  ...Or for opportunities to remove barriers that are limiting their ability to provide efficient and effective service both internally and externally?
3. Have you ever measured how long it takes for organizational development opportunities to reach decision makers and to be implemented in your organization?
4. How long is too long?  …1 year?  …4 years?  …20 years?
5. What do you loose during that time?  ...Customers?  ...Employees?  ...Revenue?

Photo by:  Grace Whitney Harrington

Resources:

• STARQUEST - Nikki Nemerouf
• Seven Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen Covey
• Good To Great – Jim Collins
• Dave Ramsey