The most important sustainable resource? Curiosity

Sustainability is a word usually reserved for those concerned with maintaining the ecological balance whilst simultaneously looking to exploit natural resources.

But sustainability isn’t just about the environment or the drive to save money. By looking at the subject in widescreen, so to speak, it’s easier to spot opportunities to apply the term to creative business thinking, making any number of processes more interesting and ultimately more rewarding.

For instance, last night on the BBC, ‘SE1’ showed that used coffee grounds could be reused to grow mushrooms which were then, in turn, distributed to restaurants — all within the same borough. It was a triple whammy — eliminating waste from the kitchen, preventing air pollution from transport, and producing food that gourmet restaurants wanted to buy.

The key resource in this was actually not the coffee grounds at all, but the curiosity that prompted the creation of the process in the first place.

So what if we thought of curiosity as a vital sustainable resource within business methodology?

The truth is that sustainable curiosity is often what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the failures. It brings with it enthusiasm and persistence — vital ingredients to success — because, like hunger, it fuels our determination and need for satisfaction.

And the good news is that curiosity does not have to be inborn. It can be learned. I know because I taught it — successfully — to a group of people who are generally thought of as the least innovative on the face of the planet. I refer of course to Accountants.

I was hired by a large professional services firm in New York City to teach Innovation. The brief was “to help a team think outside the box”.

The engagement began and ended as a collaboration between me and the team. They gave me their passions outside work, and I shaped exercises and reporting techniques around them. The goal: to take the kind of curiosity they used readily in personal life and get them to aply it to the work environment.

To illustrate, one man was very interested in horse racing. I asked him to keep a journal about his day-to-day considerations around his betting habits. How he chose the right horse, jockey, race and so on. Over a series of months, we reviewed the kinds of assumptions he questioned, the variables or triggers he knew were worth investigating, and his thinking patterns that had become a matter of course when he was naturally fascinated by something.

By raising his awareness, articulating and honing the thinking processes natural to him at the track, we were able to create habits that worked throughout his work day. The team flourished as they shared their new awareness, articulated their thinking and integrated what worked among them.

By the end of 6 months, there was almost nothing that didn’t seem worthy of a second look. Then it was just a question of exploring, observing and ultimately choosing which leads to follow to get to the desired aim.

So not only do you not have to be a start-up to be successfully innovative, but the more we consider revising processes, the more creative we can get.

Sustainable Curiosity is the key to making the most of all your resources, because everything depends on your people finding the inspiration to explore. Then it’s a case of the discipline to validate the Big Idea you find — and to create the right processes and infrastructure to ensure it thrives.