I am a lot of things… futurist, optimist, analyst, lifelong learner, partner, coach, leader, and yes, a mom. As my son grows, I continue to be thankful for Alexa, Google, Bing, Siri and all the other digital assistants available to me.
As a parent we have a crash course on building our “patience muscles” – years of experience being faced with this barrage. “Why is the sky blue?”, “Why do we sneeze?”, “What is the right way to get bubblegum out of the carpet?”
We are challenged to have the right answers (I mean, heaven forbid we passed along the wrong info… [Insert bad parent label here].) But something delightful has happened as a result. Over the years I’ve found myself questioning what I thought I knew and often being surprised by bits of knowledge that I never bothered to fact check in the past.
The situation for most of us at work today doesn’t embrace questions. Think about how quick we are to judge when our teammates don’t have the answers we need, and how frustrating it can be when we are questioned on how & why we do things. To have to justify how we have come to do the things we do, or even to have to say those dreaded three words… “I don’t know.”
In a world full of change it’s time celebrate a sense of curiousity.
Albert Einstien said “The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” As a business analyst I often find myself working with really smart people who really know their stuff. Functional specialists who have been doing their particular line of work for years and years and have earned their stripes. Its my job to ask the questions… “How do you do what you do?” “Why do you do what you do?” “What works?” “What doesn’t?”
Objective distance is a gift that allows the analyst to see patterns & links that those engaged in the work may not be able to see. To challenge every idea of how a thing is done until we can unequivocally say that we are being both effective and efficient at our work.
The trick is for each of us to get in the practice of being comfortable with acting like a 3-year-old at work. Never stop asking why.