Don’t build a culture of learning, build a culture of curiosity !

I think, while a lot of carrots and sticks are being used by well-meaning organisations to build a culture of learning, but it is simply not working to expectations. From “Give them All – CLO Ms. Joan” to “I want it Now- COO Mr. Baton”, all kind of business leaders are struggling to make their bag of tricks work towards building a rich culture of learning in their organizations. Now, touted by many as a competitive differentiation, a great culture of learning at organisations is widely believed to determine not just success of companies but even their survival in this fuzzy-dizzy business environment.

But the question is, Can one build a culture of learning only with the many carrots and sticks policies in vogue these days? The answer in my opinion is a big “No”. I believe that before building a culture of learning, organisations need to first build a culture of curiosity. It is only on the strong foundation of curiosity, one can build an enduring culture of learning.

Let’s first very briefly see the common carrots and sticks used by leaders in their endeavor to build the culture of learning.

The Carrots

Policies and initiatives are creatively imagined and dangled frequently by several well-meaning organisations to encourage employees to learn. These organisations are often seen to regularly sponsor their employees for relevant education & training programmes, make available vast libraries of courses at no cost to their employees, give value in appraisals for learning new skills, and even offer sought after job roles to those who acquire specific credentials or certifications. Many innovative organizations go even further by trying to make learning enjoyable by presenting it in forms, that resemble other activities normally enjoyed by people e.g. games, short movies & videos, contests etc.

Do these “carrots” work? Well, perhaps in a very limited way, and I have not come across many leaders who are really satisfied with the progress they are making with these “carrots”.

The Sticks

Well, Sticks on not learning for people are more indirect and manifest in myriad ways from very hard hitting one like getting pink slips, and also others like lower appraisal ratings, slower career progression, temporary benching etc.  In traditional organizations, with no clinical hire and fire policies, the so called “stick” for people who refuse to transform and learn comes in the form of such people being ignored in any matter of consequence at the work place. But do these sticks even work? In my experience, not much. These sticks perhaps achieve in creating more melancholy and cynicism among employees rather than cultivate a culture of learning.

The Curious Case of Curiosity

“I have no special Talent, I am just passionately curious” said the great scientist Einstein.

I remember in the early years of my career, a senior leader of my then employer organization regularly visited our department for periodic reviews. One of the frequent thing, he would assert in our meetings and said was “Guys you don’t have to think, you need to only execute”. Whenever people had any uncomfortable questions on the strategy or plans, he would bang his fist on the table and said that “much smarter people than you, have thought through this plan and you have to only do as told”. “Do not trouble your brains with all the Why, What, How, just go and execute”, he often added menacingly.

Unfortunately, there was not even a wee bit of discomfort that was felt to his style to quell questions and thinking. All of us, the young employees had earlier spent many years in school and college  ecosystems, where curiosity was generally discouraged and the focus was more on obediently following a regimen set up by a figure of authority. This stance at the workplace by a senior business leader was normal for us and only an extension of a system that went from school, college and now at the work place. You, might be surprised but actually, this leader was even considered a role model and I observed later that some people even decided to mimic his style when they took up team leader positions in the future.

However, long term exposure and conditioning of employees in such an anti-curiosity, anti-question environment is one of the biggest impediment to building a culture of learning. In such a culture, when people fail, they feel sad but not sufficiently curious to know why they failed. Worse, even when they succeed, they are happy and joyful but have no idea why they succeeded. Work life becomes a roller coaster of triumphs and tragedies, but unfortunately they gain very little understanding on the way and suffer from a general lack of a desire to know and improve. This numbed inclination to know more, ask questions, investigate and be curious, leads to widespread apathy towards the drive to learn among people.

Curiosity does not kill the Cats, It makes them Tigers!

Contrary, to what we have grown up listening to wisdom quotes like “Curiosity Kills the Cat”, Curiosity actually is perhaps the best elixir for learning.  Even as per some well acclaimed research work, the "human brain simply loves curiosity". As per these research studies, curiosity prepares the brain for learning. It acts like that stimulant on whose signal the brain opens up and starts grabbing and grasping the new information.

Researchers even found out in their experiments, that the region of the brain of their subjects which is related to reward and pleasure, gets activated when someone is made curious. It is a similar rush of dopamine that we experience while tasting our favorite food or winning a game or doing other pleasurable activities. So, curiosity also equals pleasure and your brain loves to answer the call of something which is also pleasurable. Hence the brain is keener to learn and acquire new knowledge and abilities when it experiences curiosity.

Well, even if we don’t quote research, it is by personal experience most of us might already know, that we are more inclined to learn something, if we are curious about it.  We hate watching a movie whose climax we already know or for that matter we won’t ever read a mystery novel from the last chapter backwards. It is only curiosity, which keeps us going and craving to know more and more.

Imagine, if the business and learning leaders had a magic wand to rekindle the fire of curiosity and a magic fan to feed the flames of curiosity among all people in their organization. People then might reverse chase the L&D for more and more learning. You might also witness a huge spike in self-directed learning and people may stop depending much on forced regimens. The people would be keener to understand the Anatomy of success, failures, markets, strategy and just about everything. In this state of curiosity bliss, the flow of business intelligence will not now just come from some smarteez working on big data and AI, but from the curious and fertile minds of all your people. I believe that what even the much hyped Big Data may not be able to achieve, the organization with people with Big Curiosity will be able achieve.

So, how do we do this? Should we wait for the Harry Potter or a Wizard of Learning to emerge with a Wand? Real World is not likely to have a magic wand that can cast a “Curiosity Spell” on the people of your company.

I have 3 Big Ideas to build a culture of curiosity. Are You Curious about what they are?

I am keen to give them right away, but perhaps it’s best that I do another article on these ideas. So, if you are ready to retain your curiosity, I promise to publish another article here next week covering these 3 BIG IDEAS to build a Culture of Curiosity! Wish you a happy and curious week ahead!