Why is it that a…

 …is a really essential thing to have?

Here’s why!

You’re the head cook in a primary school.
It’s your job to design the menu and make the meals.

You want to make the healthiest food you can, but also food that will actually be eaten by the kids.
You know what healthy is, but how do you find out what kids actually will eat?
The best way  is to find out what they DO eat.

If you worked in an office or a factory you might be able to run a report on your work that’d show you this sort of thing.  

But you can’t, cos you’re a cook, there’s no database, no performance person.
There’s just you.

You and your curiosity.

With that you can do anything.

Here is what one cook with curiosity did…

Watching her talking to the children as they clear their plates, it’s obvious she is utterly committed to the job. “I stand by the bins so I can hear what they’re saying,” she says. “But, just as importantly, I can see exactly what they’re eating.” [link]

She wanted to know so she went and found out. She went to the work and got knowledge because she wanted to know.

People who are curious will find a way to find out.
People who are not curious will not.

It is easy to learn when you are curious.
When you are not curious you won’t learn a thing.

Here’s what happens when you’re presented with some dead important knowledge. An answer to something you need is right in front of you…

The answer has nowhere to go! That’s the thing with knowledge, it’s like a vampire, it can’t get inside your head until invited inside

But what happens if the person has a question in their head?

The answer has somewhere to go!
Not only does it have somewhere to go, it is sucked in.

“Questions are places in your mind where answers fit.
If you haven’t asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go. It hits your mind and bounces right off.
You have to ask the question – you have to want to know – in order to open up the space for the answer to fit.” [link]

That’s the purpose of questions, they are the receptors for answers. They make room for answers by creating a space your mind has to fill with answers.
No questions, no answers.

So what’s this got to do with systems thinking then?

I once was doing listening to demand with some staff who were nice and polite, well intentioned and hard working. But it wasn’t going spectacularly well. Then they said something that made me understand why…
They asked me when I wanted my demand data.

They didn’t want it, they thought they were collecting it for me, the performance person
They didn’t have the question, the hole in the mind needing filled, they just were collecting the answers for somebody else out of a sense of duty.

When I stopped doing things with them, they stopped. There was nothing needed filling, no hole.
They were not the people who asked me to help them with a problem they had. It wasn’t their manager who asked me, who wasn’t in the room. It was someone else who ALSO wasn’t in the room. The person with the problem wasn’t in the room, therefore the question wasn’t in the room. Without the question being in the room, there was nowhere for the answers to go.

Without curiosity there’s nothing.