[CTQ Smartcast] Stefaan van Hooydonk on why curiosity makes the world a better place
In this Smartcast, CTQ co-founders BV Harish Kumar and J Ramanand explore a theme close to the heart of Choose To Thinq: how we can wield curiosity in a way that makes a difference to our lives.
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Stefaan van Hooydonk is the founder of the Global Curiosity Institute, whose aim is to help organisations foster a mindset of curiosity to inspire them to keep discovering and innovating. That, in turn, they say, will help make the world a better place.
Stefaan talks about how companies and societies need to build curiosity not just as a cornerstone of their foundation, but explains how the price of not being curious could be too high, and why, today, curiosity could be the only thing that can actually save the cat.
P.S. Don’t miss the Curiosity Rapid Fire quiz at the end!
Some things we talk about
Cultivating the “curious” mindset in companies and societies
How companies who value curiosity thrive in adversity
The environment you need to foster and encourage curiosity
The different types of curiosity
Translating new ideas into new products/services
Importance of humility as part of the curious mindset
Combining curiosity with agility
Some tips from Stefaan
If you are a manager, be humble enough to ask: “How am I doing?”, to your subordinates.
Find the right balance between ideation and innovation
Welcome ideas from anywhere and anyone, irrespective of hierarchy
Cultivate the curiosity habit and mindset, instead of just focusing on behaviour.
Some books we mention
· Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein
· Insight: The Power of Self-Awareness in a Self-Deluded World by Tasha Eurich
· The Philosophy of Curiosity: 34 (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy) by Ilhan Inan
Do take the Global Curiosity Institute’s Curiosity Quiz and find your curiosity quotient:
If this topic interests you, we recommend the Smartcast on ‘What Should Go In Your Book-Reading Diet’.
TRANSCRIPT OF THE SMARTCAST EPISODE WITH STEFAAN
[00:00:00]
Stefaan van Hooydonk: When you're influenced by something, a person or an event, you almost instantly make two decisions. First of all, is this thing novel enough for me? Is this thing new enough for me? Does it have novelty potential? Immediately afterward, you're going to ask yourself, do I have enough coping potential? Do I have enough capacity to deal with this? And if you answer yes to both, you're going to be curious. Curiosity is the only way out for us. In the fourth industrial revolution, we have to be smarter… not smarter, but we don't know the future.
Ramanand: At Choose to Thinq, we think curiosity makes the world go round. When we heard of our guest today, and his venture, The Global Curiosity Institute, we knew we had to talk to him. Our guest today is Stefaan van Hooydonk. Stefaan, welcome to thIS Smartcast.
Stefaan: Thank you so much for having me.
Ramanand: Stefaan, before we get into your current journey, can you tell us the curious paths that you've taken before you got here?
Stefaan: I think my entire life was one of curiosity. I lived in quite a number of countries. I am from Belgium originally. I studied Chinese and Economics. During my studies, I left for China. I graduated and moved to Hong Kong and in investment consulting at the end of the 1980s. When China was just opening up, and it was a very dynamic, energizing [00:02:00] time. I was working in investment consulting and then moved into the learning space. I set up a business school or the executive education part of a business school in Shanghai. Then I moved to the corporate side. I joined Nokia in China, moved on to Finland, the headquarters of Nokia. I've been always involved in the innovation of learning and being either the head of a corporate university or the chief learning officer or both. I have been doing that, indeed in Nokia, and then Akfa, spent some time with Philips, with Flipkart in Bangalore, India. I had a beautiful time there. Then in Saudi Arabia. In London, I was with Cognizant, my last job before I started the Institute.
In Cognizant, I was in charge of the learning and development for 300,000 people, which in itself is a humbling thought, I think to make sure that everybody gets constantly driving and also is constantly curious. Because at the end of the day, learning and development can only do so much. We can bring the horse to the water, almost proverbially, but we cannot make it drink. The more people are really curious and keen to grow themselves, and how much the organization is supporting, that magic happens without actually learning and developing from doing anything. That got me excited about learning.
I'm sure we'll talk a lot about it in the session. Thanks for having me.
Ramanand: Quite a fascinating journey, I think something that we would expect someone who loves curiosity to kind of have. Stefaan, a lot of people watching this probably think that they were curious as children, but in their jobs, their professions, [00:04:00] they may not really see the role of curiosity in it. So what do you say to people like them?
Stefaan: Indeed, it is true that curiosity has a different notion in society. We all know that curiosity killed the cat, or at least we have that saying as if curiosity is a bad thing. If you're looking at the notion of curiosity through history, you see that curiosity is at best allowed, but many times in history is really frowned upon. Because curiosity has something unruly about it. Curiosity, in my definition, is the desire to challenge the status quo, to learn, to explore, and to discover. For instance, very interesting when you're looking at the early church fathers, they were saying curiosity is bad. It takes you away from your interest in God. So, don't do these strange things, and go wandering about, and in your thoughts because that's just a negative thing.
All the way till now, when you're looking at the Renaissance, we're thinking, we're starting to explore the world and humans, we all know that part of history. Often they said curiosity is only relevant for the haves, the have-nots shouldn't be too curious. They should listen and be quiet, that type of thing. You still see that pervasive after the Industrial Revolution, where the industrialists were the guys with the ideas and the innovation, but the workers or the blue collars in our current language. They were there to just shut up and do what we tell them to do. We didn’t want them to venture out on too many ideas.
Think about Frederick Taylor, for me, he is probably the most important thinker in the 20th century, because he invented the economic system that we have now. [00:06:00] When he said in scientific management, that the managers are there to do the thinking, and the not managers are there to do the doing. Please don’t think if you're not doing that type of thing. We see that nowadays also in our educational system. It's a teacher who knows, and the students who don't know, and shut up and work towards tests. While at the same time, you're seeing beautiful examples of where curiosity is changing things, and now in COVID-19 times, you see at the company level, because it's not only individuals who can be curious, also companies and even societies can be curious or not. You see that some companies are taking the COVID-19 situation as a beautiful innovation stepping stone, while a lot of companies are just freezing.
Maybe we'll talk about it, about some of the barriers to curiosity. Stress and anxiety are the worst things you can do to curiosity. If you allow it, then things aren’t happening. Back to your question, I think that curiosity is the only way out for us. In the fourth industrial revolution, we have to be smarter… not smarter, we don't know the future. Until about 10 to 15 years ago, when there was kind of this linear path towards where we are now because it was all predictable like today is predictable upon yesterday. It’s a volatile and uncertain type of environment.
Nowadays, if kids go to school [00:08:00], they learn the tricks of the past. But, the tricks of the past are not always helping towards solving for the future, because the future is so uncertain. Let me stop here for a second. The more curious you people are, it’s already proven, the more they're making faster careers, they're making more money, the more companies are curious, as I said earlier about COVID-19, the more they're innovating, and they're allowing innovation to happen, and the more societies thrive. I hope that people don't focus too much on the cat, but focus more on themselves.
Ramanand: Quite a lot of fascinating threads to unpack there, Stefaan. Like you mentioned, the frowning down on curiosity, people somewhat associate it with a little bit of mischief, you have to have a little bit of a questioning attitude, a slightly mischievous attitude sometimes. That can turn off people, the powers that be. As you said, this year, if there hadn't been centuries or decades of curiosity, we wouldn't be innovating vaccines, we wouldn't be asking questions like what does it take to suddenly re-architect your life, the way you work almost overnight. You mentioned a few of these barriers. Why don't we get into that? What do you think are the top few barriers that hold people from expressing their curiosity?
Stefaan: It’s a beautiful question. I think there are two dimensions and I'll cover the two dimensions in curiosity. Curiosity is not only about the individual curiosity, it's also about the environment. [00:10:00] I can be curious but my environment is pushing me not to be curious. For instance, if I have an overbearing manager, who just wants me to be doing, not to think, and not to venture ideas and volunteer new questions and things like that, then I'm going to be curious, maybe in my private space, but not in my corporate space. There's also an environment or if a parent doesn't allow their kids to ask questions, with the 70 times why, why, why the kids are asking, then it's proven that the intellectual capacity of the child goes down. The environment is important as well as the individual dimension.
I think an individual detractor would be things, as I mentioned earlier, anxiety and stress. For professionals routine is an important one, just doing all the time, the same stuff. That also kind of hampers your curiosity. Also, knowledge, having too little or too much. I'll come to that in a second, what research has shown about curiosity in the perfect spot. These are some of the individual’s barriers, stress, and anxiety. Talking about stress and anxiety, if you're looking at refugee camps, or now in COVID-19, if everything is happening to you, if you're stressed because of the environment or because of other things, you're not going to be curious. It’s a little bit like Maslow’s, you're focusing on survival rather than the next step, because learning and growth in curiosity and innovation are all preparing for tomorrow, but not for today. Some of the environmental or external drivers as a barrier for curiosity for me are people.
People could be enormous uplifters of our curiosity or they can pull us down. [00:12:00]. Also culture and climate. I've seen companies where for instance, there's no rotation policy, where people are not allowed to move from job A to job B, even if they wanted to. That's not really helping me, that's the kind of a culture or an environment. Or even algorithms, if you're looking at Facebook, and the social media environments, where people are drawn into their own tribe. There are always messages that confirm my thinking of today. I'm not going to be encouraged to think about what the neighbors think, or what some other people that are not part of my thinking environment.
If you allow me I'd love to dwell one second on the knowledge part. Because too little knowledge is hampering curiosity, too much knowledge is as well. Curiosity is following an inverted U shape. Where, if you don't know anything about something, imagine I'm not great at astrophysics. And if people are giving me some formulas, or some solar systems in mathematical format, I don't know enough about that. I'm not going to allow myself to be curious in that space, because I have too little knowledge. It has also been found that people are hugely specialized in something and think of themselves as big specialists, they're also not going to be very curious anymore. Some research has shown that there's a danger with doctors who have too much experience. They're often less good at diagnosing patients than young doctors, who still have this feeling or urge of am I doing the right thing? Am I going to go deep enough? Am I going to read up on things that I don't know? [00:14:00] Often young doctors are more in tune with young research. That's kind of a feeling. And this entire, if you want your knowledge, if your knowledge is just enough, not too much, not too little, then you're often at your best space of curiosity.
There are two dimensions that come in. When you're influenced by something, a person or an inventor, you almost instantly make two decisions. First of all, is this thing novel enough for me? Is this thing new enough for me? Does it have novelty potential? Immediately afterward, you're going to ask yourself, do I have enough coping potential? Do I have enough tools in my head? Do I have enough capacity to deal with this? If you answer yes to both, you're going to be curious. That's why you see that some people are curious about one thing and less about the other. That's an important thing that often people think that oh, you have to let knowledge go to be curious. That's the wrong thing. The more knowledge you have, the more you're going to be curious because you have a better database, to create inferences and stuff.
Ramanand: I think that's a really nice framework. One of the knowledge access and the means or the ability to cope, access to look at especially when you're trying to deconstruct why someone is instead of saying they're not curious, you're probably asking a much better question. If you ask, what is the right environment for them to be curious in? Your example of the doctor, it wasn’t a point I thought of earlier, which is, in some sense, you're saying that the right amount of intellectual humility is also important for curiosity? Because it makes you stop, question whether your knowledge [00:16:00] has changed in any fashion, the environment has changed in any fashion. That humility, plus a little bit of safety in terms of asking, being able to express that question is what I picked up from what you just said.
Stefaan: Beautiful, very nice. Yes, absolutely.
Ramanand: There are some organizations who would love to have curiosity in the organization, or sometimes even call it out as a core value? If you had an organization that said curiosity was a core value, what behaviors do you think you would expect their employees to be exhibiting?
Stefaan: Beautiful question. There are probably two things to this. When I talked about the external dimension, as well as the internal dimension, a curious organization would need to allow curiosity to happen. Is the curious organization creating the right culture and the right climate for innovation to happen? Next to that, of course, there's also the individual who has to show curiosity. If we're focusing on the individuals for a second, what I've been intrigued with through my career is that some people are naturally just doing this. Without even being called curious. These people, A players, people that are naturally reading things, that are naturally on top of their game, or naturally part of the right networks inside the organization, external, who have the natural humility, as you just mentioned, to not pretend they know everything. These people, of course, we all want to think of ourselves as being A players, but what research [00:18:00] has shown is that about 10 to 15% of your population in your organization would be really called A players. These people are doing this naturally, and to your questions, these people already behave in such a way.
Now you have the B players, which is the majority of your organization. People that want it, and at times are curious, but not are not doing it consistently, or are not doing it all the time. These people typically are people that need some support. Either support by a manager or support by culture or support by processes to really become A players. This is where my experience in my last couple of companies, by not just telling people, hey, guys and girls, you have to be self-propelled, and you have to be curious because children are curious, you also have to be curious, without realizing that maybe people might have lost some of their curiosity along the way. Also, not giving the right tools and training, and mindset to go in that direction might be wishful thinking. In my experiences, actually doing uplifting sessions and training people on mindset, on curiosity, on growth mindset, just planting those seeds in people's minds makes a lot of difference. Then giving it back, and then people are adults and if you treat them like adults, they'll rise to the occasion. At least the majority of them will.
Ramanand: In fact, at Choose to Thinq, we often think of this as nurturing a garden. You cannot just pick and just suddenly expect to grow overnight. It will take its time, but you have to keep watering it, you have to keep tilling the soil. [00:20:00] It takes a little bit of effort from everyone.
Stefaan: Absolutely, I love the metaphor of the garden. In some cases, as a manager, as a leader, you can only water the plants. You don't know whether they'll grow big or not. It's up to the plants and the soil and other things too. But managers have such huge power. I call them the shadow of a manager, the shadow that they're casting under the environment which can be beautiful. Now, if I'm talking to leaders, often I've not seen any leader, I’ve not seen every single individual, when I'm asking the question, Are you curious? Those are saying no, actually, I'm not curious. Everybody thinks of themselves. And that's a great starting point. Everybody thinks of themselves as being curious.
What my own research and a lot of research of others have shown is that when people are referring to curiosity, they only refer to what you could call intellectual curiosity. What I've added, and you might have taken the diagnostic I shared with the link over email. Intellectual curiosity is very important. But I'm also focusing on empathic curiosity, social curiosity, and my curiosity about others. Probably the most important one for me is, am I interested in myself? We have two eyes, which are looking externally looking at the world and looking at others. But, we don't really have a sense organ to watch internally.
Also, schooling is not preparing for this, society or preparing for us to go. I'm 52 years old, [00:22:00] and there are 52 years of dust on my soul. I cannot penetrate very quickly and very easily into my soul, because I have to plow through 52 years of dust, and how do I do that? How do I kind of uncover the onion all to go all the way to the core? Although we're saying that we are curious, and that we are self-aware, and that we do self-reflection. It's harder. That's why maybe moving back to the leaders, there was some beautiful piece of research done by INSEAD, the French Business School. They asked leaders, executives, and non-executives, how much their organization would allow for curiosity. 83% of the leaders say, yes, our organization is doing this, it is allowing and orchestrating curiosity. But, only 50% of the non-executives were agreeing with this. It's also your perception of how, because typically, leaders would be the people who will put in the extra hours and the extra effort, and were at times also lucky in making their career. They're more paid to be curious, than the other people. You might think that organization is allowing curiosity, but it might not be filled by everybody in your organization.
How you made me think about humility, I think it's a really important dimension. If you're thinking of a number of leaders who are really good at this kind of big leader, I would call Elon Musk, who's trying to put his fingers in so many different things because he wants to explore new things. Then he recruits specialist teams to drive that. Or [00:24:00] Satya Nadella, who changed Microsoft dramatically into a not know-it-all culture, but a learn-it-all culture. He was okay not to know and to have the humility to say, I don't know, let's find out together or what do you think? Rather than appearing to be on top of everything all the time. Or Vasant Narasimhan from Novartis, who as you mentioned earlier is such a believer in this, that he changed his corporate values and included curiosity as part of the corporate values, which is a beautiful dimension.
Ramanand: I think the definition of a great conversation is where we don't know everything. We are learning it all in a conversation like this. It's been fascinating. In fact, I wanted to ask about the leaders, and you did mention a few. So, let's ask a harder question, the more hard-nosed question of is there a business case for curiosity that can be made? We've quoted examples, we know from personal experience the role that curiosity has played but is there enough of a case now, for curiosity for leaders to just know, just go ahead and bring that in?
Stefaan: Well, it's a very good question. In 2018, Harvard Business Review came out with a cover story around the business case for curiosity. I definitely think there is a business case, if you're looking at [00:26:00] what I said earlier, in our recent COVID-19 environment, you have companies who are freezing, and you have companies who are using COVID-19 as a jumping board towards new greatness. I think that companies would need somehow to find a better balance between what I would call exploration and exploitation. Exploitation is what we've been so good at until recently. That's the entire function of efficiency, running the right ship. That's very much in a Frederick Taylor-ist way of thinking. Then you have innovation coming in when a crisis is hitting us. We're still looking at our old efficiency matrices, and the refreezing is not really going to help us.
Also nowadays, with the fourth industrial revolution, driven by Infotech, and Biotech, there are so many changes hitting us. Everybody is affected by either AI or by changing industrial dynamics, or just continuing doing the things we did yesterday. It's not a very good recipe for preparing us for the future anymore. It might have been 20 years ago, not anymore. So, suddenly, allowing for questions, and allowing for questioning the status quo, allowing ideation from happening in your organization. There’s a good company in China, Haier. They have found this already quite a while ago. They said there is a direct correlation between how many ideas you allow to bubble up in your organization and the number of new products you can [00:28:00] grow.
Not every idea is viable. But, the more ideas you have, the more possibilities you have of having good ideas bubbling up. Some companies are starting to become really good at this. The answer may be back to Satya Nadella’s environment, choose to let go of some things, just saying maybe I don't know, and let's not assume that this small group of leaders have all the information. What can we do to invite everybody to chip in, especially in a knowledge-intensive environment? The manager is often not the person anymore who knows, because it's the experts around, and your role is to guide them to, channel into doing all the things that you can do.
A factory setting might be slightly different. Even then they're listening to people on the shop floor for ideas and how you can do things better, faster, is also a way that requires humility to assume that we don't know everything. For a business case, I need to do more research. What I'm finding already is that it's not only for the individual, but it's for the individual and the team and the environment to drive together. It's a great way of balancing exploitation and exploration. Often managers are saying that, oh, I don't want to allow too many ideations because that will keep people from their efficiency. I think that's typically less efficient managers are talking about this, [00:30:00] because good managers know when to allow for exploration versus when they say, okay, now we've done our ideation and let's move into production.
There was a recent, beautiful piece of research that Survey Monkey had been doing. They found that curiosity combined with agility were two key aspects for a company to thrive in the current critical crisis information. Does that make sense?
Ramanand: Yeah, you did. I think, one is the evidence outside and one is the evidence that you see for yourself. I think a few of the companies that you mentioned, have crossed that emotional resistance to something like this. Likeyou said, since you have a lot of ideas that power innovation, curiosity is the fuel that in turn powers these ideas. There is a very clear correlation with all of this.
Harish: I had one question, Stefaan you mentioned, some of these companies and leaders, they're like the stars who themselves are so curious, and you can see their curiosity in different ways. What are the manifestations of this curiosity for the people on the ground to actually feel that, also to refer to your point about leaders, seeing how curious their organizations are versus other non-executives having a different perception? What are the manifestations of curiosity for people on the ground to feel that yes, we are part of a culture that is encouraging curiosity?
Stefaan: It's a beautiful question, Harish. Let me talk about the results, first, of what you could see in a [00:32:00] curious environment, and then we can see what are the benefits, what the traits are for a manager, and maybe some of the aspects people need to feel. I think, the result of curiosity, and again, I'm basing myself on what research has focused on. The fewer decision-making errors in a curious organization, because the more people are curious, the more you realize, for instance, what their confirmation bias is. The more people are curious, they're going to listen to each other, and you're going to limit group conflict. Also, you're going to be less stereotyping people. There are fewer decision-making errors, there's also less group conflict. That's more related to empathic curiosity. The more you are able to put yourself in people's shoes, and not only try to kind of read or think from my perspective, and only my perspective, the more you're going to be able to relate to other people's ideas, be open for them, and also be able to be open to people's emotional reactions.
Another result is that for both creative but also non-creative groups, there's motivation happening if you're curious. There's also a better balance, as I said earlier, between exploration and exploitation. These are some of the emanations. I think, as an employee, how do I experience those things? It's interesting.
I just started launching a team diagnostic. You have taken the individual diagnostic. The individual diagnostic is all about how do I behave like a curious individual against my curiosity in the world, others, and self? The team diagnostic I'm doing now with [00:34:00] a number of companies is how much is the environment allowing me to be curious or not? There I find a number of dimensions already, the culture of ideation, the culture of am I allowed to come up with questions? Or can I ask naughty questions? Can I ask difficult questions? Can I ask questions about why we are doing the things we're doing? Maybe you don't have to ask those questions in town halls, but at least in smaller groups, where the risk can be psychological safety. I can question things. Can I venture ideas? Or am I just asked to do the things I need to do? Do I come to the office every morning and my boss is telling me ‘Oh, this is what your work package is for the day and for the rest, shut up and do what you need to do’.
Or the manager relationship? Or the relationship with colleagues? Or is there a sense of can I fail here? Of course, you will fail all the time around the same topic. But can I? Can I stick up my neck and fail at something? And do I get celebrated then? Do I get a thank you note from my CEO? You failed, but we learn something and maybe we learn for some other project? Or is this tarnishing your career prospects? That type of thing. Again, that's psychological safety to drive this. Again, I think managers have a huge role to play there.
Humility is an important one. This balance between exploration and exploitation, but also role-modeling behavior is really keen. Being open [00:36:00] to feedback. Am I open to feedback? One of the standard questions I asked during my performance discussions with my teams was, how am I doing? It's also, I guess, a humility-driven question because it can put you on the spot because you don't know what you're going to get back. However, just by venturing that question, there's so much I learned about myself, about the teams, about things we can improve. I would encourage everybody to do that. That's also part of this role modeling. I'm curious about what you think of me. I don't know whether I fully answered your question or not, but I hope I touched upon some dimensions.
Harish Kumar: Yeah, definitely. It popped up another question in my mind. I think it's safe to assume that everyone here on this call will probably be talking of the price of not being curious as the most important thing. Have you ever faced that question from anyone who has asked you what is the price of being curious, as an organization? Is there something that I'm letting go of in terms of so-called efficiency or some other traditional metric just because we're being curious?
Stefaan: It's a beautiful question. I've not heard this question, but I saw it in one of the Harvard Business Review papers by Francesca Gino. She did some research around the topic of [00:38:00] is curiosity or is the assumption that curiosity will lead to inefficiencies. She found that it isn’t. That is more like an urban myth, that if you allow too much ideation and too much questioning that will lead to inefficiency. There's absolutely no research that proves those statements. Now, I will probably turn it around. What if you don't do it? If you're looking at the age of companies, and how old the company gets, 100 years versus nowadays, I don't know what the latest numbers are, but last time I checked, numbers are coming down. Like great companies are not lasting for 100 years anymore. It's more like 20 years or so I need to double-check those numbers. That shows for me, it's not only about just having one idea and to thrive, it's about having a continuation of ideas.
When I was at Cognizant, I always said I have 300,000 trainers here, 300,000 smart people, where every person has something to share with at least one other person. It's not only about the managers or leaders coming up with ideas, but anybody can come up with ideas. If you have that process, your ability, the interest for startups, for allowing these things to bubble up, then I'm sure magic will happen. It might come from places you didn't realize as company leaders. That would spark something great towards the future. What's the downside of it? I don't [00:40:00] know, or at least I do know, the downside is that you're not going to explore. If you have a perfect product, if you have a monopoly, then of course, it's easier for me not to explore because you're good for it. But how many companies can say that? Maybe a government agency could say that because they have the monopoly of that service in a country. So you also particularly see at least as a theoretic stereotyping. I've seen a lot of administrations who were not like this, but some are not as curious about improving things and changing their processes, as others.
Ramanand: Alright.
Stefaan: You give me difficult questions.
Ramanand: Let's lighten it up a little bit, Stefaan, by turning the gaze inward. We have spoken about in our questionnaire, is curiosity about the world, about oneself, and about others? Before we do that, however, in all of our Smartcasts, we like to ask one trivia question around the theme for the month. We love our trivia quizzing. We're going to put you on the spot and ask you this question, but we'll help you get to the answer if needed. Alright, so all set.
Stefaan: Yes.
Ramanand: Okay. A few years ago, NASA ran a contest to name one of its rovers. The winner was a 12-year-old girl called Clara Ma, who said about her choice that it's a powerful force, and it gets me out of bed every morning. What was her winning entry for this NASA rover?
Stefaan: Lovely question. Of course, it’s curiosity.
Ramanand: How did you know that? Well done! [00:42:00]
Stefaan: I did my research. It's a beautiful statement. I think it's also beautiful that NASA is allowing, or is inviting kids to contribute. NASA itself is kind of way up there in terms of curiosity, kind of exploring space and allowing young adults to share thoughts. It’s beautiful. That's again, the humility you spoke about.
Ramanand: Absolutely. Tell us a little bit about what got you to create the Global Curiosity Institute? What is its mission? What do you plan to do under that umbrella?
Stefaan: With the Institute, I want to be the spark that reignites curiosity for individuals, for society, and for companies. I think we need it nowadays, to drive this. What drove me towards curiosity and what drove me towards setting up the Institute is as I said earlier, I've been intrigued all my life as being Chief Learning Officer or Head of the Corporate University, to realize what drives an individual and what is the right way for an individual to be curious or for an organization to allow curiosity? How do you make all of that?
I was very fortunate to be able to work with beautiful companies and to try things out and see how things are going. Interestingly, in the L&D space, few of us have been focusing on mindset and habits, we've been focusing very much on behaviors, and on skills, but the habit somehow we shy away from, as if we don't really know how to deal with it enough. I thought, what about setting up an [00:44:00] institute to drive this? For companies, yes, but also for society at large. Because I'd love for every grandmother, for every student, for every teacher, people that are not necessarily part of the corporate fabric, to also learn skills. That's why, for instance, the diagnostic that you've taken yourself is free, and want to do more, either low cost or free services for society at large. That's why I set it up. I guess I got to an age where I want to give back. I also want to really follow my passion. I had my own company in the beginning of my career. Then I moved into the corporate space and now I'm back into a small venture. It's so energizing the feedback I am getting from people, people are volunteering with their time, and with ideas. Suddenly we're doing a podcast like this because you guys think there is merit in discussing curiosity. Isn’t that beautiful?
Ramanand: I also wanted to mention that, for getting the right answer to the curiosity question, we're going to give you a little gift. You can give this to someone else or you can use it for yourself. We run some groups around reading and being aware of the future. It's called a reading compound because we believe that reading compounds over time. That's your prize for doing well.
It's great that you mentioned habits. For those of you listening, if you go to the Global Curiosity Institute website, there's a questionnaire that you can take, that gives you a very nice introduction to your levels of curiosity. [00:46:00] As Stefaan has already mentioned, it doesn't look at curiosity as one single dimension, it breaks it down, and there are different aspects. You can be curious about the world, you might be curious about other people, of course, curious about oneself. The reflection aspect like Stefaan mentioned.
Stefaan, we also read that you're into meditation. You've clearly had many hats in the past. Tell us a little bit about your curiosity habits. What do you do to not fall into the trap of forgetting about the values of curiosity?
Stefaan: I guess for me, it's a bit easier doing curiosity and the institute all the time, and I need to talk about it, I need to research it. But, I think for a long part of my career, I was just giving. I was reading and I was giving more than receiving, than giving myself back. It was roughly, I think, about seven to eight years ago, when I realized I was missing out on things. There's still so much beautiful knowledge out there in the world. If we're not careful, we're missing out. I've been talking to quite a number of leaders, that being a good leader is not a trait, it's more like a state. You are a good leader now, and if you don't sharpen your soul constantly, there is a danger that after a while, you're not going to be as good as you are today. So I made a very conscious decision those seven, eight years ago, to start reading up on much more than I've ever before. I started reading pretty much anything I can put my head around. It's like going into a bookshop. You're inspired by [00:48:00] so much different stuff. I'm reading more than the nonfiction card. There's so much stuff around economics, around history, around anthropology, around psychology. I started reading myself quite a bit. I have started two masters’ degrees in philosophy since this year, just to get myself with the degree. I'm trying to read. There's so much stuff out there in terms of videos, in terms of books, in terms of audio books, in terms of podcasts, there's no reason anymore not to explore knowledge.
Often I'm trying to make the case there, and what I said earlier, algorithms can be one reason why people are not curious. You would say that the internet is probably the only great innovation that was happening in the last 15 years or so. But there's still an opportunity to use that tool towards becoming better. There's also a possibility to use the internet for killing time. Almost using that mindlessly in going through things is more a factor of being incurious almost.
The only learning happens with reflection. If you read a book, if you see YouTube, if you see a [00:50:00] blog post, if you just read it and go on, nothing happens. You're just wasting your time. You have to reflect on it while you're reading and after you're reading. There's also a gift that we can give to society. I think it helps people to change how they learn or gives them ideas on how to approach knowledge in a new way. You know? So I'm trying to be curious.
Ramanand: What's on your bookshelf right now? Anything interesting that you can tell us about?
Stefaan: I'm reading a couple of things now. I am reading one book on my Kindle, which is Range by David Epstein. That’s a book on the difference between narrow and broad knowledge. Do we all want to be Tiger Woods who started when he was seven months old and only did one thing? Or do we want to be more like Roger Federer, who only started developing his tennis career when he was in his teens? His mother was apparently a tennis coach who didn't even want to coach him. Epstein is an important one. I'm reading through an audiobook version, I’m reading Insight by Tasha Eurich. It's around self-awareness. I'm reading many books at the same time. Sorry about that. I'm reading a book on the philosophy of curiosity. [00:52:00] I'll stop here. There's a couple of other books I'm reading but it's lovely.
Ramanand: Great. Range, by the way, is one of Harish’s books of the year. I haven't managed to get around to it yet. But I must. I think we need to have a separate episode on just all the books that we will enjoy recommending to each other. This is not going to do it justice.
Stefaan, there's so much we could talk but let's do one final minute. We're going to do a little curiosity, rapid-fire, just to close out things. Here goes. One place on earth that you're very curious about?
Stefaan: Mount Kailash.
Ramanand: Nice choice! Strangest food item that you've ever had?
Stefaan: Fried ants.
Ramanand: There's also a tribe in India that has a dish made of red ants. We haven't tasted it. But yes, it's a curiosity in itself. What are the kinds of topics that you get asked a lot of questions on? Apart from curiosity?
Stefaan: How can I improve it? Curiosity is a topic. A lot of questions I'm getting from people are great. I got the report now, what do I do? How can I improve? That's a constant question that's coming up. I'm actually working on it.
Ramanand: One mystery that you want to solve or want to see solved?
Stefaan: Whoa. [00:54:00] I was thinking, first of all, why are we rooting for the wrong people in our societies? What are the drivers? Or not the wrong people, but people that are not necessarily lifting societies to a higher and better level of sophistication? That's not a very politically correct answer. But that's a mystery to me.
Ramanand: Right. I think all the things that you're reading will hopefully lead you somewhere to that because it's all mixed up with anthropology and economics and psychology. Right. I think you have the right topics, to chase that question. It’s a mystery so you are not alone. Let’s close with this question, if you could spend a day in the mind, body, and shoes of a person, who would it be?
Stefaan: This is an Indian Smartcast, so I'd say Satguru. I'd love to be in his mind for a day.
Ramanand: Interesting answer. Alright Stefan, on that curious note, thank you so much. It's really been insightful and interesting. You've opened up a few threads for us to chase and I'm sure you know, the cats that you see here are not going to be killed by curiosity. Thank you so much.
Stefaan: Thank you. Thanks for having me. It was a really good experience.
Ramanand: Thank you.
[00:56:00]
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