The Jakarta Post
Features - 29 April 2007
Published as "Overcoming Fear of Making Decisions"
In working with employees and with students, we often come across people who are unsure of what to do when given open ended problems. This article will focus on decision making and discuss blocks that may create fear for making decisions and ways to overcome them.
In the early years of developing creative thinking in children using visual arts as a media, Kayee met a girl of seven who, when asked to choose materials, wouldn’t even move from her seat. She was very quiet to begin with, that even during one on one discussion she would only whisper her ideas. But when Kayee asked her to select the material to visualize her idea, she literally cringed.
What it took at the end was for Kayee to hold her hand while she chose among the variety. Even then, every time she picked up a material, she would ask Kayee for reassurance that it was indeed alright for her to decide.
This instance was one of the many examples we later encountered in many of our students, and not just in the young. Dewi, who also teaches design for freshman students in a private university in Jakarta, is often troubled by students who have difficulties in dealing with open ended problems. Most of them, at the beginning of the semester, would ask so many questions when being given a task, for the fear of being wrong.
Dewi usually asks them to come up with several solutions they could think of, and select one that they think would solve the problem best. But many of them usually have a hard time in selecting one out of the proposed solutions to a problem. They often ask Dewi which one she prefers or try to guess which one Dewi likes and make their decision based on this perceived preference of their lecturer.
In the first instance of the young girl, we figured her fear was not only because she was very timid, but also because she was not used to being asked to make her own decisions. After some time being with us, she eventually opened up and became more confident in making choices on her own.
What we often advise parents, teachers, and adults working with children is to give children opportunities to make acceptable choices. For example, when going out with children, we can ask them to choose what clothes they want to wear if there is no dress code to worry about. If there is a dress code, we can show them choices of clothing they can wear, and let them choose. Likewise with places to eat, snacks to buy, things to do, shoes to wear, etc.
Reassurance, encouragement, and a lot of practice in the case of the young would do the magic. With a lot of practice in making decisions for themselves, children have more confidence in their ability to think and make decisions for themselves. With a lot of reassurance and encouragement, they know that they are being trusted, which in turn will improve their self-esteem.
In the second instance of the undergrad students, Dewi often asks her students why they are afraid of making decisions. Most of them would immediately say that they are afraid of being wrong, being laughed at, or being labeled as weird. Some also say that they are used to rely on or being told which decision to make by their lecturers.
In addition to the problem of not being used to making their own decisions, older people are more aware of their social environment, and are more likely to conform to the culture they are immersed in.
In the Eastern culture, decisions are often made by the elderly or the more respected people in any given group. In previous generations, and even today, children and the younger ones don’t normally have a say in the decision making process. They grow to be dependent upon their group leaders to make decisions on their behalf.
Some, if not most, of Dewi’s students at the university level choose to major in an area either because their parents or others close to them told them to, or because it was a compromised decision, catering more to their parents’ desire than their own passion.
But as we grow older, we are more likely to be held responsible for making our own decisions. The problem is that when we are not used to making our own decisions, not only do we feel uncomfortable with the responsibility placed on us, but we may actually think that we are not supposed to make decisions.
Being conditioned not to think for themselves most of their lives, in the context of Indonesia, we have seen many repercussions from those who are not used to independent thinking, those who think they are not supposed to think, those who don’t have the confidence to make a decision based on their own judgment, those who are too lazy to think for themselves, and those who don’t want to bear the responsibility of decision making.
In the work situation, similar situations also occur although in an even more complex ensemble that may camouflage the inability to make decisions.
In work organizations in Indonesia, especially in smaller companies, specialization is rare and there are many shades of grey area between work that fall directly within our job description, and those that are definitely beyond the responsibility of our role. As a result, many of us are often demanded to multi-task. Faced with such situations, how do people deal with the extra decision making responsibilities that come with each task?
We have seen different reactions, from those who would rather stick to their job description similar to the seven year old girl who cringed at the idea of having to make a decision, those who (like Dewi’s university students) ask so many questions and need so much guidance that we would rather work on the problem ourselves to save time and frustration, to those who pretend they are working on the problem, but end up creating more problems. The challenge is how to remove the fear of making decisions so that tasks get completed without having to issue step-by-step instructions.
Similar to how we approach this problem with the young, we could start by giving the people in question small decisions to make, and to provide some supervision to ensure and reassure that the decision making process is going well. As the person gains better judgment and confidence, we can reduce the amount of supervision given while providing plenty opportunities for the individual to practice and become comfortable with making small decisions. Over time, the scale of the decisions can be increased as confidence in the decision maker and our confidence in them grow.
But what if you are one of the persons who are having difficulties in making decisions? As a start, you could try to identify what is causing the problem. It could be related to the more general reasons that we have explored in this article, but there could be more personal reasons that may require some honest self-reflection.
Similar to our previously explored strategies, you could start by giving yourself small decisions to make. When facing a problem, try to first think about possible solutions for the problem. If you feel you need more information or guidance, find an experienced person you can trust to discuss how you have thought about the problem and how you arrived at the possible solutions. Your advisor will be able to help you generate some criteria which should help guide your thinking and decision making.
Whether you are dealing with simple or complex decisions, refer to the parameters of the problem and the objectives that you are trying to achieve before evaluating and ranking the solutions based on how each would best respond to the objectives and parameters of the problem.
Be deliberate in crossing out the solutions that you know do not meet the objectives and parameters for the given problem. On the other hand, remain open to and be mindful of solutions that have potential for solving the problem that need more refinement and development. These general decision making principles are applicable whether you are making simple decisions or are using complex decision making tools in evaluating solutions.
For simple decisions, you can simply rank the solutions based on the order of personal preference. Complex solutions may require the use of evaluation tools.
However, tools and strategies only help map out the strengths and weaknesses of different solutions. Tools and strategies will not make the decision for you – their role is to help you make better-informed decisions. Afterall, if all decisions can be made by computation without an element of risk, what is the role of humans in the decision making process?
What we should aim for is to recognize that there is always an element of risk in decision-making and pluck up the courage to take those risks. In short, we need to be comfortable with the idea of making decisions and the responsibilities that come with it.
As you go about making decisions, applaud your risk taking spirit and seek people you can trust to encourage you. Celebrate your courage and the mistakes and failures along the process. Trials and errors help us become better decision makers.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Designing Ideas
The Jakarta Post
Features - 15 April 2007
Published as "Why some firms perform well while others don't"
Dewi Susanti & Kayee Man
What makes some industries perform better than others? What makes a company, among many in an industry, excel in the market while many linger and languish?
In a recent visit to arts and design industries in Bandung, Yogyakarta, and Bali, Dewi came across an interesting observation that may give a clue to the key to success and failures in relation to the above questions.
Of all the industries she visited, two stood out from the rest. They shared some similarities: they took advantage of local resources and skills, they were owned by well-traveled Westerners living in Indonesia, and they employed Western or internationally-educated designers.
Of the remaining industries, the more successful were owned by Indonesians who were well-traveled and designed their own products. The less successful industries did not design their own products. Some of them worked with international designers or companies, who came over to order products with specific designs. Sometimes, even this face to face meeting was eliminated when designs were faxed over by the overseas buyer.
When asked what their challenges were in promoting their products, the less successful industries mentioned design as the main obstacle that prevented their products from penetrating deeper into international markets.
There are many reasons why some industries perform better than others, but in this article, we will focus on only two. The first one is the ability to design, and the other one is to appeal, to sell if you will, to a bigger market. The two, as you read on, are actually connected.
From the example above, it may seem that the ability to design is relevant only to the arts and crafts industries. But in reality, design penetrates deeply in almost every industry there is. Managers design paths to achieve goals, create internal control systems, reward systems, policy and company culture among other things. Teachers design lesson plans, tasks, and lectures. Computer programmers design software, networks, and information flow and storage systems. And so the list goes.
When we design a system, say for work flow in an office, the better it works, the more time is made free for us to work on value adding tasks. If the work flow in our office does not function properly, many people will be faced with problems that we or they or someone else in the office will have to solve. So naturally, the better we can design certain things, the better it is for us to take on bigger tasks.
Design requires thinking. In the example of the arts and design industries, the ones that don’t do so well as a company are those that only manufacture products. In these cases, having the production skills for a particular product would be enough. But what happens when the product no longer sells? What happens when the clients find cheaper manufacturers?
Dewi met such an industry in which the owner, over the course of the years, had found it more and more difficult to get the raw materials he needed. When asked what he would do if he couldn’t get the materials anymore, his response was simply to close down his business.
In addition, many manufacturing companies in Indonesia and throughout the world have recently lost businesses to China, for its ability to mass produce things cheaper and better. Many of them were forced to close down or reduce its production and market significantly.
So what could businesses in this situation do? The answer that we would like to put forward is design, which we would repeat, requires thinking. Designing is planning ahead, envisioning how things would run, thinking about who would be the target of the design and how to appeal to these people, anticipating problems that could be encountered and overcoming these problems before they even occur, and last but not least, selling the design and the ideas contained within.
As a colleague recently concludes, design adds value and enhances life experiences. And because of this, design can result in an increase in economical value.
An example given by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore in “The Experience Economy” (1999) comes to mind in relation to how added value and life experiences can add economical value to products. Suppose we want to start a business in the coffee industry. The cheapest coffee we can buy is when it is purchased in bulk directly from the farmers. If we put this coffee into packages with brands and sell them in supermarkets, we can sell the coffee at a higher price.
If we ground the beans, add hot water, put them in cups, and sell the liquid off the counter, we can sell the coffee at an even higher price. So the price increases as we add more value to enhance the experience of drinking coffee, from having the cup brought to the tables around which customers sit in their soft-cushioned sofas, playing certain kinds of music to boost the ambience, up to serving it in a café with a view.
The cost of coffee sold in different forms with various values and experiences according to Pine & Gilmore can range from being cheaper than a dollar a pound (or a fraction of a dollar if you buy them off the warung stalls in Jakarta) up to as high as fifteen dollars a cup if you buy it in a café by the Grand Canal in Venice (Pine & Gilmore, 1999).
Adding value and life experiences often require us to think across different fields. In the case of the coffee business, the cup we serve the coffee in, how service staff deal with customers, the machine we use to ground and make different kinds of caffeine drinks, the architecture and interior design of the café, the kind of music we play, the branding of the café, the variety of the menu, the color of the flower we put on the table, how the tables are set, and many other details, can contribute directly to the added price we charge. It’s all about design.
Think Starbucks. Same coffee beans can be found in Sumatra, Sulawesi, Java at a tiny fraction of the price they are sold at in Starbucks’ stores. But without the brand, the ambience, the people, the design of them all, the coffee simply won’t sell at the same price.
So how do we design to broaden the appeal of our products to the market? A simple principle: if we know our market well, we will know what would appeal to them, or at least what would not appeal to them. Market research is also part of design of products, an important point that many tend to forget.
From the comparison of the arts and design industries mentioned at the beginning of this article, the least successful companies have no direct contact with their market. Their production depends on orders from their clients. They don’t design their own production in the broader sense of researching, planning, envisioning, targeting, anticipating, and selling their products.
The better performing arts and design industries sense for what kind of things may appeal to a bigger (international) market, which seems to be sharpened by an exposure to multicultural environments. This exposure is most direct by means of traveling and education in multicultural environments.
Why would this exposure be important for sales? Again because of the simple principle that the more we understand the market, the better chances we have for selling something that appeals to the market. If we want to sell to the Japanese market, for example, the more we know about the culture, the people, the environment, the value system, etc., the more likely we can sell our ideas to them.
Now we’re not suggesting that everyone should travel and get their education internationally. We realize that gaining direct exposure to different cultures and access to international education may be limited to a privileged few, but all is not lost as there are more affordable ways to access different cultures as well.
If we want to know more about the Japanese people, we can read magazines, news and books by and about the Japanese; we can use and observe its products, play Sudoku, read its comics, watch its films and television programs; we can make friends with the Japanese or those who know about them, go to Japanese restaurants and drink sake with them. And while doing all these activities, ask this question and think: what makes something Japanese? What would appeal to the Japanese?
The more exposed we are to people from different cultures and backgrounds the more likely it is for us to differentiate one from another. Thus, making friends with people from backgrounds other than our own, observing certain cultures through their products, or traveling to areas within our own cities we rarely go to can be very revealing.
Again, while doing all these activities, keep a question at the back of your mind for the time when you see something that strikes you: how can this relate to the design of your idea? For many of us, thinking or not thinking about this may mean the survival or death of our line of business – our very own livelihood.
Features - 15 April 2007
Published as "Why some firms perform well while others don't"
Dewi Susanti & Kayee Man
What makes some industries perform better than others? What makes a company, among many in an industry, excel in the market while many linger and languish?
In a recent visit to arts and design industries in Bandung, Yogyakarta, and Bali, Dewi came across an interesting observation that may give a clue to the key to success and failures in relation to the above questions.
Of all the industries she visited, two stood out from the rest. They shared some similarities: they took advantage of local resources and skills, they were owned by well-traveled Westerners living in Indonesia, and they employed Western or internationally-educated designers.
Of the remaining industries, the more successful were owned by Indonesians who were well-traveled and designed their own products. The less successful industries did not design their own products. Some of them worked with international designers or companies, who came over to order products with specific designs. Sometimes, even this face to face meeting was eliminated when designs were faxed over by the overseas buyer.
When asked what their challenges were in promoting their products, the less successful industries mentioned design as the main obstacle that prevented their products from penetrating deeper into international markets.
There are many reasons why some industries perform better than others, but in this article, we will focus on only two. The first one is the ability to design, and the other one is to appeal, to sell if you will, to a bigger market. The two, as you read on, are actually connected.
From the example above, it may seem that the ability to design is relevant only to the arts and crafts industries. But in reality, design penetrates deeply in almost every industry there is. Managers design paths to achieve goals, create internal control systems, reward systems, policy and company culture among other things. Teachers design lesson plans, tasks, and lectures. Computer programmers design software, networks, and information flow and storage systems. And so the list goes.
When we design a system, say for work flow in an office, the better it works, the more time is made free for us to work on value adding tasks. If the work flow in our office does not function properly, many people will be faced with problems that we or they or someone else in the office will have to solve. So naturally, the better we can design certain things, the better it is for us to take on bigger tasks.
Design requires thinking. In the example of the arts and design industries, the ones that don’t do so well as a company are those that only manufacture products. In these cases, having the production skills for a particular product would be enough. But what happens when the product no longer sells? What happens when the clients find cheaper manufacturers?
Dewi met such an industry in which the owner, over the course of the years, had found it more and more difficult to get the raw materials he needed. When asked what he would do if he couldn’t get the materials anymore, his response was simply to close down his business.
In addition, many manufacturing companies in Indonesia and throughout the world have recently lost businesses to China, for its ability to mass produce things cheaper and better. Many of them were forced to close down or reduce its production and market significantly.
So what could businesses in this situation do? The answer that we would like to put forward is design, which we would repeat, requires thinking. Designing is planning ahead, envisioning how things would run, thinking about who would be the target of the design and how to appeal to these people, anticipating problems that could be encountered and overcoming these problems before they even occur, and last but not least, selling the design and the ideas contained within.
As a colleague recently concludes, design adds value and enhances life experiences. And because of this, design can result in an increase in economical value.
An example given by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore in “The Experience Economy” (1999) comes to mind in relation to how added value and life experiences can add economical value to products. Suppose we want to start a business in the coffee industry. The cheapest coffee we can buy is when it is purchased in bulk directly from the farmers. If we put this coffee into packages with brands and sell them in supermarkets, we can sell the coffee at a higher price.
If we ground the beans, add hot water, put them in cups, and sell the liquid off the counter, we can sell the coffee at an even higher price. So the price increases as we add more value to enhance the experience of drinking coffee, from having the cup brought to the tables around which customers sit in their soft-cushioned sofas, playing certain kinds of music to boost the ambience, up to serving it in a café with a view.
The cost of coffee sold in different forms with various values and experiences according to Pine & Gilmore can range from being cheaper than a dollar a pound (or a fraction of a dollar if you buy them off the warung stalls in Jakarta) up to as high as fifteen dollars a cup if you buy it in a café by the Grand Canal in Venice (Pine & Gilmore, 1999).
Adding value and life experiences often require us to think across different fields. In the case of the coffee business, the cup we serve the coffee in, how service staff deal with customers, the machine we use to ground and make different kinds of caffeine drinks, the architecture and interior design of the café, the kind of music we play, the branding of the café, the variety of the menu, the color of the flower we put on the table, how the tables are set, and many other details, can contribute directly to the added price we charge. It’s all about design.
Think Starbucks. Same coffee beans can be found in Sumatra, Sulawesi, Java at a tiny fraction of the price they are sold at in Starbucks’ stores. But without the brand, the ambience, the people, the design of them all, the coffee simply won’t sell at the same price.
So how do we design to broaden the appeal of our products to the market? A simple principle: if we know our market well, we will know what would appeal to them, or at least what would not appeal to them. Market research is also part of design of products, an important point that many tend to forget.
From the comparison of the arts and design industries mentioned at the beginning of this article, the least successful companies have no direct contact with their market. Their production depends on orders from their clients. They don’t design their own production in the broader sense of researching, planning, envisioning, targeting, anticipating, and selling their products.
The better performing arts and design industries sense for what kind of things may appeal to a bigger (international) market, which seems to be sharpened by an exposure to multicultural environments. This exposure is most direct by means of traveling and education in multicultural environments.
Why would this exposure be important for sales? Again because of the simple principle that the more we understand the market, the better chances we have for selling something that appeals to the market. If we want to sell to the Japanese market, for example, the more we know about the culture, the people, the environment, the value system, etc., the more likely we can sell our ideas to them.
Now we’re not suggesting that everyone should travel and get their education internationally. We realize that gaining direct exposure to different cultures and access to international education may be limited to a privileged few, but all is not lost as there are more affordable ways to access different cultures as well.
If we want to know more about the Japanese people, we can read magazines, news and books by and about the Japanese; we can use and observe its products, play Sudoku, read its comics, watch its films and television programs; we can make friends with the Japanese or those who know about them, go to Japanese restaurants and drink sake with them. And while doing all these activities, ask this question and think: what makes something Japanese? What would appeal to the Japanese?
The more exposed we are to people from different cultures and backgrounds the more likely it is for us to differentiate one from another. Thus, making friends with people from backgrounds other than our own, observing certain cultures through their products, or traveling to areas within our own cities we rarely go to can be very revealing.
Again, while doing all these activities, keep a question at the back of your mind for the time when you see something that strikes you: how can this relate to the design of your idea? For many of us, thinking or not thinking about this may mean the survival or death of our line of business – our very own livelihood.
Sunday, April 01, 2007
Be Curious
The Jakarta Post
Features - 1 April 2007
Published as "Curiosity isn't just about asking questions"
Kayee Man and Dewi Susanti, Contributors, Jakarta
When was the last time you stopped to think about what you saw?
When was the last time you jumped with excitement over something you found amazing or wondered about something you encountered, became curious about it, and discovered something new about it?
Look at children around us. Ever seen a child intently absorbed into observing and tinkering with something? Children have a sense of wonderment and curiosity for the everyday world around them.
If you have been with a child, or have children of your own, you would know that they ask a lot of questions on things you no longer think about.
We are pretty sure that it would be hard to find a sense of excitement, wonder, curiosity and freshness in adults, while most children have these traits.
Even if time were available in abundance, do adults have a sense of childlikeness to ask "why"? Do adults become curious when met with seemingly trivial happenings?
Life is such a mad rush for most of us nowadays that we might feel it's a waste of time to stop and think about something as trivial as, for example, melting chocolate.
Back in the 1940s, Percy LeBaron Spencer observed that his chocolate-and-peanut bar had melted in his pocket after he had walked past a microwave-emitting device called a magnetron (a device to produce microwaves for use in airborne radar).
Intrigued, the story goes that the curious scientist placed popcorn kernels (that popped) and an egg (that exploded) near the magnetron.
What Spencer observed was the heating effect of the microwave beam. A patent was granted to him in 1950 for the microwave oven.
Do curiosity, experimentation and discovery have to be confined within the walls of the laboratory? After returning from a walk, George de Mestral of Switzerland observed cockleburs (a herbaceous plant) sticking to his clothes and his dog one day in 1941.
Intrigued, de Mestral examined the cocklebur under the microscope and observed that the plant had hooks that hooked onto the loops of the fabric and the dog's fur. He eventually invented Velcro (which means `hooked velvet' in French), the ubiquitous fastener, which was granted a patent in 1955.
Both Spencer and de Mestral had a sense of curiosity to follow up on what some of us would have dismissed as everyday happenings.
Adults ask fewer questions
In our view and from our personal experience, the most difficult parts of childhood to hang on to as we grow up are our curiosity and sense of wonder.
A loss of curiosity seems to be a symptom of growing up. John Plomp said: "You know that children are growing up when they start asking questions that have answers."
In Victoria Wagner's words: "A young child is, indeed, a true scientist; just one big question mark: What? Why? How?"
Because there isn't yet a way the world should be, stereotypes do not color the way the world is viewed by children. There are many ways to explain everyday phenomena, there are many queries of the existing state of affairs, there are questions of why things can't be otherwise.
Kayee's friend spent a few months studying the topic of curiosity and uncovered a UCLA study that found "five-year-old children ask 65 questions a day, whereas a 44-year-old adult asks six".
Rodney Hill also cited research on this topic: "A child asks 105 probing questions a day. The average adult asks a mere six."
No matter what the numbers are, we think the general message is clear. We could blame the accumulation of knowledge and understanding of the world on the declining rate of adults asking questions and being curious. Is it really because we know everything already? Hardly.
Kayee's dad, although not a rocket scientist, is one of the most curious adults she knows. Kayee can never walk down the street or the aisle of a mall with him on a straight path, because anything that her dad hasn't seen before will attract him like food scraps attract ants.
He makes his way over to the object of curiosity and stays there until he has something to take away with him -- mostly the satisfaction of knowing.
Kayee is grateful for her dad's curiosity, because he also happens to be a very good cook. How does this relate to curiosity?
When asked what he would like to order when dining out, Kayee's dad would answer, "This -- never tried this before."
His insatiable curiosity, even when dining out, has resulted in the creation of new recipes at home. Kayee can't think of a better benefit for someone's curiosity.
Curiosity isn't just about asking questions. We can set ourselves a quota of questions that are asked every day. "A question a day keeps the brain ticking away" is how we see it. However, the real skill in being curious comes not in the posing of questions but in seeking the answers.
Think back to the last time you heard a question asked by someone else (or even yourself). Did you immediately give an answer to the question? Or did you say "I don't know."
If you didn't know the answer, your motivation to find the answer may have led to you an answer and widened your pool of knowledge. The real challenge in being a curious being is in remaining open to an answer that may surprise us even if we think we know the answer already.
Going beyond the obvious
After living in Jakarta for several years, Dewi still finds the city difficult to grasp. Being trained in architecture in the West, she probably has this preconception about how a city should be understood and navigated.
But this does not seem to apply in Jakarta. Curious, she started to study the city and how people move around it. She found that Jakarta has layers of organizing systems that make the city disjointed.
We could also think of these typical work situations: Why is she not performing? (Answer: She's lazy and incapable).
Why are sales decreasing? (The distributors can't get the goods to the stores in time).
Why hasn't work behavior changed after so much investment in training? (The training was ineffective).
If we stopped ourselves from giving the obvious answers, we may have discovered that performance in a colleague has declined because she is getting conflicting instructions from different departments, sales are decreasing because production isn't matching demand and that training didn't lead to the desired change in work behavior because leadership isn't supporting the desired change.
Deferring judgment is very much part of the art of being curious. Curiosity isn't just about asking questions.
Recently, our curiosity led us to research the effects of creative thinking training on university students. We remained open to the answers down to the last minute of analysis. Our findings: our training had both positive and negative effects.
Apparently, even creativity training can be conforming if not taught and learned mindfully in the Indonesian context. If we had not remained open to the possibility of being surprised by the results, we would not have gained as much insight as we would have.
Being curious keeps our minds active. Being curious creates opportunities for us to learn and discover beyond the obvious.
Get yourself into the habit of asking a question a day, resist answering the question immediately, and go about finding an answer with an open mind.
A young curious mind once asked "Why are car tires black?" They are black so the dirt from the roads will not show up. Wrong. Carbon black is the compound that gives tires their color. It is added to the rubber of the tires to give the tires durability and agility.
The young curious mind's next question was "How can car tires be made colorful while maintaining their durability and agility?"
Curiosity can work like a twister -- it starts small and whips up more and more questions and answers and is difficult to stop.
We can look to the child for a model of being curious. They are not confined by their knowledge (or lack of it), they have not accumulated a mass of stereotypes and the way things should be. The beauty of this model is that we can be sure that we can get there, because we have all been there before.
There's a saying that curiosity killed the cat. We would argue that a lack of curiosity kills our capacity to grow.
Features - 1 April 2007
Published as "Curiosity isn't just about asking questions"
Kayee Man and Dewi Susanti, Contributors, Jakarta
When was the last time you stopped to think about what you saw?
When was the last time you jumped with excitement over something you found amazing or wondered about something you encountered, became curious about it, and discovered something new about it?
Look at children around us. Ever seen a child intently absorbed into observing and tinkering with something? Children have a sense of wonderment and curiosity for the everyday world around them.
If you have been with a child, or have children of your own, you would know that they ask a lot of questions on things you no longer think about.
We are pretty sure that it would be hard to find a sense of excitement, wonder, curiosity and freshness in adults, while most children have these traits.
Even if time were available in abundance, do adults have a sense of childlikeness to ask "why"? Do adults become curious when met with seemingly trivial happenings?
Life is such a mad rush for most of us nowadays that we might feel it's a waste of time to stop and think about something as trivial as, for example, melting chocolate.
Back in the 1940s, Percy LeBaron Spencer observed that his chocolate-and-peanut bar had melted in his pocket after he had walked past a microwave-emitting device called a magnetron (a device to produce microwaves for use in airborne radar).
Intrigued, the story goes that the curious scientist placed popcorn kernels (that popped) and an egg (that exploded) near the magnetron.
What Spencer observed was the heating effect of the microwave beam. A patent was granted to him in 1950 for the microwave oven.
Do curiosity, experimentation and discovery have to be confined within the walls of the laboratory? After returning from a walk, George de Mestral of Switzerland observed cockleburs (a herbaceous plant) sticking to his clothes and his dog one day in 1941.
Intrigued, de Mestral examined the cocklebur under the microscope and observed that the plant had hooks that hooked onto the loops of the fabric and the dog's fur. He eventually invented Velcro (which means `hooked velvet' in French), the ubiquitous fastener, which was granted a patent in 1955.
Both Spencer and de Mestral had a sense of curiosity to follow up on what some of us would have dismissed as everyday happenings.
Adults ask fewer questions
In our view and from our personal experience, the most difficult parts of childhood to hang on to as we grow up are our curiosity and sense of wonder.
A loss of curiosity seems to be a symptom of growing up. John Plomp said: "You know that children are growing up when they start asking questions that have answers."
In Victoria Wagner's words: "A young child is, indeed, a true scientist; just one big question mark: What? Why? How?"
Because there isn't yet a way the world should be, stereotypes do not color the way the world is viewed by children. There are many ways to explain everyday phenomena, there are many queries of the existing state of affairs, there are questions of why things can't be otherwise.
Kayee's friend spent a few months studying the topic of curiosity and uncovered a UCLA study that found "five-year-old children ask 65 questions a day, whereas a 44-year-old adult asks six".
Rodney Hill also cited research on this topic: "A child asks 105 probing questions a day. The average adult asks a mere six."
No matter what the numbers are, we think the general message is clear. We could blame the accumulation of knowledge and understanding of the world on the declining rate of adults asking questions and being curious. Is it really because we know everything already? Hardly.
Kayee's dad, although not a rocket scientist, is one of the most curious adults she knows. Kayee can never walk down the street or the aisle of a mall with him on a straight path, because anything that her dad hasn't seen before will attract him like food scraps attract ants.
He makes his way over to the object of curiosity and stays there until he has something to take away with him -- mostly the satisfaction of knowing.
Kayee is grateful for her dad's curiosity, because he also happens to be a very good cook. How does this relate to curiosity?
When asked what he would like to order when dining out, Kayee's dad would answer, "This -- never tried this before."
His insatiable curiosity, even when dining out, has resulted in the creation of new recipes at home. Kayee can't think of a better benefit for someone's curiosity.
Curiosity isn't just about asking questions. We can set ourselves a quota of questions that are asked every day. "A question a day keeps the brain ticking away" is how we see it. However, the real skill in being curious comes not in the posing of questions but in seeking the answers.
Think back to the last time you heard a question asked by someone else (or even yourself). Did you immediately give an answer to the question? Or did you say "I don't know."
If you didn't know the answer, your motivation to find the answer may have led to you an answer and widened your pool of knowledge. The real challenge in being a curious being is in remaining open to an answer that may surprise us even if we think we know the answer already.
Going beyond the obvious
After living in Jakarta for several years, Dewi still finds the city difficult to grasp. Being trained in architecture in the West, she probably has this preconception about how a city should be understood and navigated.
But this does not seem to apply in Jakarta. Curious, she started to study the city and how people move around it. She found that Jakarta has layers of organizing systems that make the city disjointed.
We could also think of these typical work situations: Why is she not performing? (Answer: She's lazy and incapable).
Why are sales decreasing? (The distributors can't get the goods to the stores in time).
Why hasn't work behavior changed after so much investment in training? (The training was ineffective).
If we stopped ourselves from giving the obvious answers, we may have discovered that performance in a colleague has declined because she is getting conflicting instructions from different departments, sales are decreasing because production isn't matching demand and that training didn't lead to the desired change in work behavior because leadership isn't supporting the desired change.
Deferring judgment is very much part of the art of being curious. Curiosity isn't just about asking questions.
Recently, our curiosity led us to research the effects of creative thinking training on university students. We remained open to the answers down to the last minute of analysis. Our findings: our training had both positive and negative effects.
Apparently, even creativity training can be conforming if not taught and learned mindfully in the Indonesian context. If we had not remained open to the possibility of being surprised by the results, we would not have gained as much insight as we would have.
Being curious keeps our minds active. Being curious creates opportunities for us to learn and discover beyond the obvious.
Get yourself into the habit of asking a question a day, resist answering the question immediately, and go about finding an answer with an open mind.
A young curious mind once asked "Why are car tires black?" They are black so the dirt from the roads will not show up. Wrong. Carbon black is the compound that gives tires their color. It is added to the rubber of the tires to give the tires durability and agility.
The young curious mind's next question was "How can car tires be made colorful while maintaining their durability and agility?"
Curiosity can work like a twister -- it starts small and whips up more and more questions and answers and is difficult to stop.
We can look to the child for a model of being curious. They are not confined by their knowledge (or lack of it), they have not accumulated a mass of stereotypes and the way things should be. The beauty of this model is that we can be sure that we can get there, because we have all been there before.
There's a saying that curiosity killed the cat. We would argue that a lack of curiosity kills our capacity to grow.
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