Despite being a tropical country, many Indians are deficient in Vitamin D. Depending on how low it is, a prescription course of cholecalciferol is usually recommended by Doctors. Why is Vitamin D even needed? It actually helps in calcium absorption. What is common knowledge is that Calcium is needed to keep your bones strong and many even take Calcium supplements. But to retain Calcium in your body, you need Vitamin D!!
Early this year, I was in a conversation with Stefaan Van Hoodyonk to understand his research in the area of curiosity and I immediately understood the impact it has on the organization – just the same way I understood about Vitamin D and Calcium absorption.
When organizations have a curious culture, employees show a greater appetite to learn and directly contributes to growth of the company.
In this second blog of the three part series, I want to share the importance of Curiosity and Learnability as the next set of foundational elements to build a purposeful people centric organization. Click here for the first blog.
CURIOSITY
Curiosity is often less understood and has many dimensions. That’s why psychology researchers call it a “meta-skill”. Curiosity is about challenging status quo, encouraging experimentation and nurturing problem solving. It is also about how much one wants to know about everything around her/him including themselves.
The most common way to look at curiosity is to bring back the child in us and keep asking umpteen questions without any assumptions and judgements.
Research shows that organizations which consciously build a curious culture see their employees spending more time on learning and collaborate better.
So, what would we gain with building a curious culture? It helps develop growth mindset, broadens boundaries of learning, helps in connecting people together, seeks better understanding of purpose of an organization and much more.
A curious culture also provides a solid platform for value innovation to thrive as teams will solve real problems with practical solutions.
LEARNABILITY
A curious mind always seeks to know more. Learnability creates engaged, motivated & passionate employees who embrace continuous learning as part of their ‘ways of working’ and work together to build a sustainable, highly productive and growth focused organization.
When employees understand the purpose and objective of learning, it creates a hungry mind and motivates them to learn. Motivation to learn creates an open attitude that shows willingness to share and receive. Open attitude leads to focus on mastery – to excel, outgrow and out perform. Mastery is further enhanced when the Leadership team is highly engaged with employees to enhance their ability to do their job. Effilor’s own research on learning transformation shows learning interventions need to be closely tied to organizational strategy and business performance to drive effectiveness.
Having a stated Purpose drives strategy. Building a culture of curiosity directly influences learnability. Increased learning creates growth mindset and its all like a circle of life. Its critical therefore to sustain this “circle of life”. In the next blog, we will see what can be done to create and sustain this circle of life. Watch this space for more !!