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Why Curiosity?

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“I have no special talents.  I am only passionately curious.”
– Albert Einstein

The World Economic Forum – backed by an outpouring of mildly panic stricken white papers from big name organisational consultancies (1) – hails our era as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. We are already riding the rising wave of an increasingly complex fusion of technologies – digital, biological, material, social – which will disrupt, revolutionize and transform almost all spheres of human culture and conduct.  Artificial intelligence, blockchain encryption, genomics, 3D printing, driverless vehicles, ‘the internet of things’, nanotechnology, biotechnology, quantum computing, renewable energy systems; any one of these innovations will have a profound impact on technical, social and organisational structures as we currently know them. The combination of all of them emerging simultaneously is, lightly stated, mind-boggling (2).

We’re entering an era of hyper-complex rapid change which will be experienced by most as serial disruption.
How to cope?
How to manage?
How to navigate intelligent pathways through tumult?

Social researchers and organisational experts from the Harvard Business Review (3) to Brene Brown (4) are proclaiming the value of curiosity to successfully navigate the turbulent cultural vicissitudes of the early 21st century.

But, what is curiosity?

Curiosity is the human trait that has enabled a physically feeble species with an exceedingly lengthy and vulnerable infancy to become completely dominant.  It’s the drive that has led to every important invention and exploration that humans have engaged in, from pre-digesting food by cooking it over a fire, to sending a vehicle (called ‘Curiosity’) to Mars. Curiosity is a dynamic of ongoing inquiry, a virtuous cycle of recurring, adaptive questioning. It’s a proactive journey of questioning, rather than a reactive defensive entrenchment.  Curiosity is a call towards something, rather than a flight from something.  Curiosity is not driven by crisis, but by wonder and awe, and it’s a drive that’s inspired people to take extraordinary risks and endure extraordinary hardships. As James Stephens wrote, “Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will, indeed, it has led many people into dangers which mere physical courage would shudder away from…”

I would like to pose that curiosity is the characteristic best adapted to resiliently navigate the kind of emergent complexity and serial disruption that we face as a species existing on an astonishingly unlikely finite living system.  Curiosity is the most useful response to what is known in strategic leadership as VUCA; Volatility/Vulnerability, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity.  It’s a key to innovation, productivity, agility, continuous renewal, well-being and fulfillment.  It responds mindfully to crises, it discovers opportunities in obstacles, it enables the release of outmoded habits and patterns and is a core element of basic resilience. But, oddly enough, curiosity is not taught in schools or places of employment, and, in many cases, it’s actively discouraged.

Why would we discourage curiosity, when it’s many benefits are so very obvious?
Is curiosity dangerous?
What, really, is curiosity?
And, if it’s of value, how do we cultivate curiosity?

This post is the first in a series in which I’ll explore these questions.

We’ll go on a journey exploring wonder and respect, conceptual bubbles and perception blinders, disruption and hard transitions, habit creation and dissembly, resistance and innovation, and vulnerability and creativity.  We’ll look at the nature of ‘questioning’, the neurology of curiosity, the relationship of curiosity to ‘mindfulness’, and how habits and preconceptions can suffocate curiosity.  We’ll look at curiosity and learning, and curiosity as a disruptor and a rebel.  We’ll explore vulnerability, experimentation and failure, and curiosity as a navigator.  Finally, we’ll dip our toes into the real question….how do we ourselves, and our organisations, become more curious?

I hope you’ll join me in this curious ongoing investigation and become, in the words of Lewis Carrol’s Alice, “Curiouser and curiouser”.

 

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(1) Age of Disruption. Are Canadian Firms Prepared. Deloitte.

(2) Above and beyond the exponentially increasing speed of technological innovation we are already dealing with the increasing effects of climate change, resultant mass migrations, increasing inequality, and increasing ethnic division demonstrated by the rise of terrorism, nationalism and authoritarianism.

(3) Tomas Chumorro-Premuzic, Curiosity Is as Important as Intelligence. Harvard Business Review.

Warren Berger. Why Curious People are Destined for the C-Suite. Harvard Business Review.

Todd B. Kashdan, Companies Value Curiosity but Stfle It Anyway. Harvard business Review.

(4) “The rumble begins with turning up our curiosity level and becoming aware of the story we’re telling ourselves about our hurt, anger, frustration, or pain.” – Brene Brown

“Failure can become nourishment if we are willing to get curious, show up vulnerable and human, and put rising strong into practice.” – Brene Brown

‘Disruption’ is asking the Question, ‘Who Are You’?

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Last month I attended and gave a workshop at ‘Berlin Change Days’ – a conference full of an extraordinary diversity of bright, creative and highly progressive ‘Change Agents’ – whose theme this year was ‘Disruption’.  The conference opened with a mock trial of ‘disruption’, debating whether the word still has credence and traction, or whether it has become a washed-out meaningless buzzword from its overuse in contemporary ‘innovation’ and ‘entrepreneurial’ parlance.  In a deft and creative move the organizers had an artist-provocateur disrupt the trial itself, demonstrating the word in action.

What really is ‘disruption’?
What has to happen for ‘disruption’ to occur?

Disruption painting

Collaborative painting done during workshop at Berlin Change Days.

The word itself opens with the intrinsically negative connotations of the prefix ‘dis’. In Roman mythology ‘Dis’ is the ruler of the underworld, and Dante carried that forward in the Divine Comedy in which the ‘City of Dis’ encompasses the sixth through the ninth circles of Hell. Today, when you ‘dis’ someone, you’re insulting them. ‘Dis’ is followed by the word ‘rupture’ which indicates a ‘break’, ‘burst’ or ‘breach’.  A ruptured spleen is a medical emergency, a ruptured pipe is one that is broken.  ‘Rupture’ is not so much a change word as a word connoting severe damage requiring emergency action.

So, ‘disruption’ is no ordinary change.  Nor is it the change necessarily resulting from an innovation, which is where we see it used so often today in entrepreneurial circles. While a new and innovative idea may have a significant impact, does it actually ‘rupture’ something? If an organisation can adapt to the innovation – by changing tactics, by buying it up, by hiring expertise – it’s not ‘disruptive’.

To break it down, disruption requires two core elements. Firstly there needs to be a functional identity: a clearly defined organism or organisation, an operating system or a set of rules, a score or a choreography of some kind.  Secondly we need an intrusion that challenges the functional identity with sufficient force that it ruptures some aspect of its core process such that it cannot continue functioning without ‘radical’ (emergency) procedures.

Real disruption is a wound to the integrity of an identity.

Band-aids don’t work on ruptures. Recovery from real disruption requires more than ‘repair’ or ‘replacement’. In fact disruption isn’t asking for ‘recovery’, a return to a previous mode of operation, at all.  Response to real disruption requires radical adaptation, structural transformation, a change in identity.

Disruption is asking a question.
The question that disruption is asking is ‘Who are you?’
How you navigate that question determines the path of your evolution.
Will you react or respond?

Will you deflect, dismiss, resist, deny or hide?
Or will you recognise it, meet it, acknowledge it, bear it?
Will you be willing to wrestle with it and, more importantly, with yourself?
Will you seek to understand it and, more importantly, seek to understand yourself?

From a theological perspective ‘disruption’(1) has a strong correlation to the ancient Greek word ‘apocalypse’.  ‘Apo’ translates as ‘out from’, and ‘kaluptein’ is ‘cover’. The word uniquely combines a sense of catastrophic termination with revelation and disclosure. Really answering disruption’s challenging call requires diving into a deeper level (the sixth through ninth level?) to ‘discover’ and ‘uncover’ deeper more intrinsic core strains and veins of meaning from which can emerge (emergent-cy) new vigorous forms and paths forward.

 

(1) Interestingly, Japanese contemporary artist Moriko Mori defines ‘Rupture’, in her Rebirth exhibition, as “the state between death and rebirth”.

In Tibetan Buddhism the ‘state’ between death and rebirth is called ‘Bardo’ and is the subject matter of ‘The Tibetan Book of the Dead’. Tibetan Buddhist scholar and teacher Chogyam Trungpa reinterpreted Bardo as simply “that which exists between situations” asserting that the spiritual and psychological processes that we go through in periods of extreme disruption are very much akin to those that we go through at death.

 

Spasm, Splinting, and Change Dynamics: Injury, Immobilisation & Aggravation

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Spasm & Splinting

So, I threw my back out…
Again…
I planted somewhere over a million trees in an evidently overlengthy treeplanting career, once upon a time rowed a dory down the coast of BC, and, for a time, took great pleasure in something called ‘Martial Dance’ which involved improvisationally and consensually flinging one another all over the place with great grace, so, my back has done its fair share and periodically lets me know it’s had enough.

fight flightThe cause is pretty much always a combination of heavy object(s), reaching, twisting and stress; in this case an innocent enough maneuvering of an amp into my ‘95 Honda (aka ‘The Blue Flame’).  Not uncommonly, having set one of my lower vertebra adrift, I exacerbate it by doing some other activity; in this case Lebron Jamesing with my ten year old who is on that delicious cusp of finally thoroughly whooping his dad at a game that he’s far more gifted at.  Baddaboom baddabay and I’m calling the game a little short and gentling home to lay my sorry ass flat on its back with a huge sigh of relief.

 ‘Herniated disc’ = one wrong move = shooting nerve pain + persistent exhaustion aching through glutes, hips, all through lower back, not to mention, in my case, a permanent slightly twisted forward tilt.  Like I said, I’ve been here a few times before and I know know that, despite an urgent desire to do something, anything to fix it as soon as possible – massage, twist, do yoga, stretch – the best thing to do at first is almost nothing except, as often as possible, lie down and give it some relief.

 Fact is, the pain is there for a reason.
Human physiology is a marvel.
Pain is a marvel – if an unwelcome one – and has a most compelling story to tell.  Pain’s great and powerful cut through all the crap nervous system megaphone announcement is “STOP”.   Stop doing whatever you’re doing that’s damaging some part of you.  In the case of back trauma it’s a whole lot of ‘STOP MOVING’ because a very high percentage of typical movements mobilise your lower back and/or pelvis.  Mobilising your lower back scrapes your herniated disc across the highway of nerves running just beside your vertebra and, nerves being what they are, you get an electric shock wave of shooting pain jolting you into immobility.

Mobility causes damage and excruciating pain, and excruciating pain is paralysing and debilitating, so the autonomic nervous system pulls a brilliant trick to immobilise the traumatised area.  It puts the muscles directly around the injury into spasm, which makes them as hard and unyielding as a piece of wood. The autonomic nervous system ‘sets’ the injured area in a splint of spasm.[1]  The traumatised area becomes effectively frozen.

Emotional & Organisational Splinting & Freezing

 Physiological ‘splinting’ is a good metaphor for some forms of both emotional and organisational trauma.  Splinting occurs, non-volitionally, around physical, emotional, organisational and social trauma[2] to reduce further damage and pain.

 The American physiologist Walter Cannon, who coined the term ‘homeostasis’ to describe the ‘internal fixity’ he believed necessary for an organism to survive, was the first to describe the ‘fight-or-flight response’; “a physiological reaction that occurs in response to a perceived harmful event, attack, or threat to survival”.  More recently PTSD specialist Pete Walker elaborated on ‘fight-or-flight’ in describing the 4Fs: fight, flight, freeze or fawn, which are psychological response to perceived harm.  

 Simply stated, the anxiety caused by real or perceived threat to which one feels helpless to respond can result in psychic ‘freezing’ well documented in PTSD sufferers.  The symptoms can be strong involuntary disassociation from situations which trigger memories, emotional ‘numbness’, or feelings of complete powerlessness, despair and futility.  They can also manifest as ideological and ideational rigidity or even fixity, as well as in addictive behaviour. In organisations a traumatic situation – a hostile takeover, deep layoffs[3], market failure – may be ‘fixed’ or ‘splinted’ by temporary authoritarianism, extreme legalisation or bureaucraticisation.

 Aggravation & Enculturation

 In physiological ‘freezing’ the functions of the immobilised muscle groups need to be covered for, so the brain calls up substitute muscle groups which, while not adapted for that role, can temporarily ‘pinch hit’.[4] A localised injury, by calling in temporal support, sets off chains of adaptations resulting in global shifts in the ecology of coordination that characterises healthy movement and posture.  Prolonged reliance on substitutions, however, will result in the brain neuroplastically rewiring itself such that aberrant and substitute posturo-movements becomes normalized and permanent.[5]

 The same can hold true for individuals and organisations: ideological fixations, addictive behaviours, authoritarianism, legalism – all of which may have been a temporary ‘fix’ for a traumatic situation – become normalized and enculturated.  However, because temporary fixes are inadequate long-term solutions they typically engender more instances of conflict and turbulence hence further aggravating an initial trauma. A vicious circle takes hold.

[1] “By ‘splinting’ the area with spasm, the hypercontracted (shortened) muscles, ligaments and fascia effectively reduce painful joint movements. Splinting is a common form of protective guarding clinicians address day-in and day-out… “
– True Grit of Muscle Spasm: Erik Dalton (http://erikdalton.com/media/published-articles/true-grit-of-muscle-spasm/)

[2] Taboo is social splinting. Taboo is a socially strategic immobilisation around an area of conduct in which there has been great pain and damage: sex, money, mental illness, etc.

[3] David Noer, author of Healing the Wounds: Overcoming the Trauma of Layoffs and Revitalizing Downsized Organizations, gives a compelling account of ‘layoff survivor sickness’. “Survivors of most organizations are angry, depressed, anxious and fearful. They are not able or willing to take risks or focus on increasing customer service. At the very time organizations need them to be the most creative and energetic; they hunker down in the trenches, absorbed in their own toxic survivor symptoms.” – http://www.cnbc.com/id/32990164

[4] “Regardless of the reason for loss of joint play, when vertebrae are not free to move, muscles assigned the job of moving them (prime movers) cannot carry out their duties and are substituted by synergistic stabilizers, i.e., the brain sends in the subs when a key player is injured.”
– True Grit of Muscle Spasm: Erik Dalton (http://erikdalton.com/media/published-articles/true-grit-of-muscle-spasm/)

[5] “Prolonged joint damage can set the stage for aberrant posturo-movement patterns which, in time, causes the brain, through the process of sensitization, to re-map and re-learn the dysfunctional movement as normal (neuroplasticity).”
– True Grit of Muscle Spasm: Erik Dalton (http://erikdalton.com/media/published-articles/true-grit-of-muscle-spasm/)