Curiosity – It’s Okay. You’re Not a Cat.

“I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.” ? Eleanor Roosevelt

“What if …?” is the first step to getting where you want to be. Sometimes, the solution will be as simple as the story about the little girl who said to let some air out of the tires when a truck was stuck in a tunnel. Sometimes, it’s the proverbial “can of worms.” Wherever it falls in that range, with curiosity, you’re on your way to a solution. Back away from “This is the way we’ve always done it” and wonder if your processes are why you’re not meeting your goals.

A good place to start asking questions is with your customers, especially the ones who aren’t completely satisfied with you. One company’s computer boards failed often when engineers at one major customer site installed them. The operations manager went over the entire process in-house. There was no issue that seemed to be the cause and it was not happening with all their customers. A tech writer asked about handling at the other end. Was there something that needed to be included in the documentation? The operations manager said that the computer boards would only be removed from the protective wrappings by engineers who knew how to handle them. The packages were actually opened in the receiving department by clerks with bare hands who took them out of their protective wrappings and dropped them into bins with the mail for each engineer.

Research! Sadly, research is becoming less reliable. There’s a book that has been around for a very long time that can help understand that. How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff is a must read for people who do not want to be tricked and is used effectively by tricksters. Here’s where curiosity becomes even more important. Question everything you read or hear. To be completely honest with you, myself, the image with this article is not a real cat looking into a bag. It was generated by Microsoft Designer when I asked for an image of “A Calico cat approaching an open brown bag on the ground.” Social media is packed with studies and graphs that show things the way someone pushing their agenda wants you to see them. Trickery is not new. It does seem to be more easily done and more pervasive.

Solutions are out there. Dig deep and trust your gut. Keep asking, “What if …?” If you get stuck, I can help.