Curiosity and Innovation in the Workplace with Author and Box of Crayons Founder Michael Bungay Stanier
In this episode of Redefining HR, I’m excited to be joined by best-selling author and founder of Box of Crayons, Michael Bungay Stanier. Michael and I sit down to talk about creativity and innovation, the role of curiosity and innovation in the workplace and what is uncovered when they are encouraged at work.
After being fired from his job in Canada, Michael started what would eventually become Box of Crayons. Michael had a simple business model for the first few years: “If you had a wallet, I’m happy to talk to you.” However, after some time, Michael found a niche in helping people, especially people in the workplace.
“We help organizations move from advice-driven to curiosity-led organizations. And we help companies like Microsoft and Salesforce and other big companies be more curious,” he shares. Michael has written several books, including the bestseller “The Coaching Habit,” released in 2015.
Michael still owns his company and recently founded another business called MBS.works, which is on a mission to help people be a force for change.
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What Creativity and Curiosity Look Like at Work
As Michael defines it, creativity is being able to see things from a different angle and “making connections between things that aren’t normally connected.” It’s looking at point A, connecting it to the seemingly impossible point C and getting a result that works that shows creativity in practice.
This concept is also a transition into curiosity, which is the core mission of Box of Crayons — to help companies become more curiosity-led. But what does an organization like that look like? Michael shares with us that for such organizations to thrive, they have to have two primary elements: a strategy that works and a culture that works. “They’re the two DNA strands that make up a successful organization,” he says.
The truth is that many organizations often don’t allow people to flourish. Companies need to foster a culture that boosts creativity and curiosity while encouraging employee success. The fact is, “curiosity is a bit of a superpower.”
Michael says, “You’re coming up with better ideas on how to solve those problems because you’re staying curious a little bit longer.” At the same time, curiosity is a consequential disruption to an organization’s hierarchy and allows more people to flourish within the company. “It allows an organization to be human-centered as well.”
Train Their Curiosity
There are people who are innately curious about everything. These people are voracious learners and are always ready to try and pick up new skills and habits. However, if you aren’t one of those people, you can still train your sense of curiosity.
Michael says that the best way to train is not to add more things into the equation but to take things away, to decrease the behavior you want to replace. Creating a curiosity-led organization is about letting people become more curious and less dependent on the advice-driven model. You have to build the habit of being more curious; it’s not enough to just say that you will be curious with only your willpower.
Leaders who want to help their people be more curious need to step back and be less eager to jump in with advice. Advice can help, but too much prevents curiosity from blooming and turns these advice-givers into what Michael calls “advice monsters.”
Matching Your Curiosity to Your Resilience
One of the outcomes that Michael wants to see through his work is organizations that are more resilient. That is, with the ability to overcome the natural “fight or flight” tendencies in the face of adversity.
Curiosity isn’t the only key to resilience, Michael says. When faced with adversity, our minds are often more instinctual rather than looking at things in a different light. In those situations, it’s important to take a step back, be thoughtful, and ask, “What are we really trying to overcome?” “What are the options you have, and what is the end goal?”
It’s essential to give people space to be curious and become more resilient, Michael says. “What curiosity does is it allows you to get a different perspective on what’s going on. It allows you to get a deeper understanding of what actually is the adverse thing. And to generate ideas and options to overcome that,” Michael says.