Dr. Diane Hamilton on Curiosity

Foreign. All right. Everybody knows innovation is cool. You want to innovate, you want to be innovative. You admire. You're jealous of innovative companies. How do you get to innovation? Curiosity plays a big part in that. The subject of our show today, tapping into curiosity for the point of innovation to make your business a better place. Hey, everybody, Bill Gallagher, scaling coach and host of our superfine Scaling Up Business podcast. We come to you every week with an author and expert, a guru, CEO, somebody to do or story, something to do with growing, scaling your company a little bit better, a little bit faster, a little bit easier, taking less of the work out of it, making it more of a joy. 630/episodes@scalingcoach.com scalingcoach.com or wherever you're getting this right now. You know, LinkedIn, Spotify, Twitter, it's X, all the podcast platforms, YouTube, that kind of thing. We're everywhere. Like subscribe, you know the deal, turn on notifications so you get it. Or if you go to scalingcoach.com you can also sign up for one of our monthly workshops. We do a workshop every month on getting started in the whole process of scaling up. So all that and more. Scalingcoach.com oh, yeah. So I'm joined now. If you're watching on screen, you can already see her here by the author of Curiosity unleashed, Diane Hamilton. Dr. Diane Hamilton is founder and CEO of Tonera.

Did I say that right?

Tonera. And she's the inventor of the Curiosity code Index, and she wrote this book, Curiosity Unleashed. And she's been around our world for a little bit and was recommended to us, so we thought we'd have her on. Welcome to the show, Dr. Diane Hamilton.

Well, thank you. I'm really excited to be here. Sounds like we know a lot of the same people, so I was very interested to be here to see the kinds of questions you ask. I want to see how curious you are. I know enough about you to know that some of your background is touching on some of the things that I work with in terms of consulting and getting people to be more relevant, which I think is really the big point behind curiosity. So this is going to be fun to talk about that today.

So living in the world of curiosity and cultivating that, what's the last thing that made you curious?

Oh, everything makes me. My grandson yesterday for Mother's Day made me very curious because it's just so interesting to look at curiosity from the eyes of a child. It was really interesting. When I wrote my first book, I looked at children because they get very curious and it peaks around the age of five, but then it tanks dramatically. And it's very similar to what we see with creativity, which we need these things if we want companies to be innovative. As you mentioned, this is so relevant in what we're trying to deal with. So yesterday was very fun to watch my grandson of how he looked at the world and how he thinks about things. And I, when I give talks, I give keynotes often and I show a picture of two little girls at the San Francisco Museum of Fine Art. And back in the 60s, it was like on the back of Time magazine, it was this really cool picture. And there's artwork everywhere around them. But instead of looking at the artwork, they're looking through the air vent on the wall below the artwork. Because that's what you do when you're a kid, right? You want to know what's behind the vent. You don't care about the artwork maybe. And we have this natural sense of curiosity that changes over time. And that's what I found particularly fascinating because there's this, there's state and trait curiosity. And if that state of like, oh, that's kind of interesting, but then you don't explore it further. But the trait form of curiosity is what I work with and I want to have people develop that and continue it as they grow older. So long answer to what I find curious. But my grandson was so cute. Watching him explore the world yesterday at one and a half, it was adorable.

He's one and a half. I have a two year old.

That's awesome.

Her favorite question is why, why, why? Why? Can't do that right now. Why? Well, because it's really day. It's too late. Why? Because the day has progressed. Why? Because the sun is going down now. Why? Well, it happens every day. Why?

I don't think they'll give up. They'll keep going forever. I was on a ski bus one time and there was a little girl, a Hispanic little girl. And she said 4k about a thousand times. So I think it's just every, every culture, you know, it's just how it, it is, it's adorable.

It's interesting. You say that it starts early on and then it, it peaks or plateaus. It flattens out for most of us around five and it's remarkable that we might get to a place and at five where we think we've got the world figured out. I feel like every time I think that I've got it figured out, life has a way of smacking me in the Head and going, oh, no, you don't learn still.

Well, it's interesting because you think about school, that's about the age you start getting into these things. And in Sir Ken Robinson's TED Talk, he talked about creativity and how you educate people out of their competencies. When we get into school, we start saying, you know, this is how it should be. And so it didn't surprise me to see that a 5 was about the time. Now, also, George Land's TED Talk, I don't know if you've seen that one, but it's also about creativity, and it mimics what we see with curiosity. He followed kids from the time they were, you know, 2 to 31, and it just peaks and tanks right after that. And by the time you're 31, there are hardly any creative geniuses, but at age 2, most of them were. So it's fascinating to me.

So before we get into all that and the stories that we have queued up, I'm fascinated by this idea, and I'm struck by. We're talking about creativity and curiosity, and I feel like I have a weakness around curiosity and a strength around creativity. And maybe you could help me dissect that. So I. And I think this is probably true of a lot of our listeners and viewers, right? There's a lot of idea monkeys in our audience. And I, like, I could. I generate ideas on waking in the shower, if I'm working out as I drive, like, I generate ideas. And with age, I've learned that most of those ideas are not that useful, valuable, or helpful. Like, that they're common, that they're. And yet I also know that my ideas are. Like, having a lot of ideas is not normal. You know, not everybody reads ideas all the time. And for me, the ideas are. They're. They're largely centered around things I know. So they're just connections between things that other people doesn't occur to. That doesn't occur to other people. Like, I see two things as being connected some way. Oh, there's an idea, right? And then. But not relevant to my problem. So I. With age, I've learned to let them go mostly. And so I'm curious, what. Like, what is that not creative? And how is that not connected? I don't know. What are your thoughts on any of that?

Okay, well, you got a little Jerry Seinfeld quality, too. You're noticing things, you know, and the thing is, any comedian will tell you you got to write down your notes, right? You got things you've noticed. You will get into a good talk later. You know that as a speaker, right? So a lot of it, I meet a lot of. I mean, I've taught thousands of business courses, and a lot of my students like to plan the plan to plan the plan. And they never do anything but plan, right? So if we have these great ideas and don't do anything with them, it's. It's very typical. But I look at curiosity as the spark to what you want to do right, in the workplace to improve engagement, innovation, productivity, motivation, you name it, right? So what I think, what. How I explain it when I talk to people is think about baking a cake. You're going to bake a cake, and you have ingredients. You have flour and eggs and water, whatever you're going to mix together. Those are your ingredients. You mix it together and you put it in a pan, you put it in the oven, and you want cake. But if you don't turn on the oven, you get something not cake, right? So that's the same thing in the workplace. We have ingredients that we want to fix these things. We have engagement, innovation, creativity, motivation, all these things. And you mix it together and put it in the pan and put it in the oven. And if you don't turn on the oven, you don't get your cake. And so we need to turn on the oven. And the turning on the oven part is curiosity. That's the spark that lights the creativity. And I've had a lot of creativity experts on my show. I mean, whether. And, you know, just in general, experts from Daniel Goleman to Harvard professors and people who deal with, you know, any kind of behavioral thing, and they all say curiosity came first. It's. So if you're having a problem with getting it to the next level, some of it is writing it down, some of it's not finding the thing that really makes you passionate. You just have to recognize those things, and we'll get into them later. The things that hold you back. But I think a lot of people don't recognize curiosity at work. We've seen the research show that leaders think that they're encouraging it. But if you look at the. Ask people who work for them, they don't agree, right? So there's a disconnect. And that's what I do. I work with companies to help them build a culture of curiosity by learning these things that keep people back from being curious. And it was when I wrote the first book years ago, when our friend Vern wrote a nice thing for it. This was a time when there wasn't much talk about curiosity. There were books about the value of curiosity in general, like what curiosity is. But when I started write about it, I started to realize I wanted to fix this. And I had written my doctoral dissertation on emotional intelligence and its impact on sales performance. So I was very interested in, you know, how to fix things with an assessment at that point. Right. And there was no, nobody was studying this stuff. And I set up a Google alert to let me know whenever there was some research or some information coming out about curiosity because I wanted to know about it. And then after getting a million Mars rovers thing and I took that out, I got nothing really. Nobody was writing about it. But now on a daily basis there was a big study last week out of UCLA saying that, oh good, your curiosity can improve when you get older. And then I read it a little closer and it's saying state curiosity. Like what you're saying, oh, that's a good idea. But then you don't do anything past that. The trait curiosity is what I work with is I want you to continue to build and grow and get these ideas. So it's interesting to watch the progression of what's happened since my first book compared to the last book.

Well, what I'm noticing as you speak, it is that there are spontaneous ideas that I have and maybe people like me have, but then ideas in relationship to curiosity are different. So if I'm curious about a problem and then I have an idea that's different, or if I have an idea and then I'm curious about how to implement it, that's a different thing. And I think as a coach, like working outside with a company, the companies are having problems, they're having and they're doing things they're doing and a lot of it they're not curious about. But as an outsider, I'm really curious. I'm like, why do you do that that way? Like to them the way it does in their industry or in their company? And I'm like, I don't know, like I'm outside, I'm curious. And I think that beginners, if you go to work for a company or invest in a company or like encounter an entity or a process for the first time, you can be curious it. And then the curiosity doesn't persist for many of us. Right?

Well, you get that fresh kind of thing going on, right? Because you're going. And it's interesting because some companies really get that, that you have to get an outside perspective. We, we hear so much about silos, right? You're stuck in your cubicle, you're stuck in your silo. Well, we're also stuck in industries. And I, in my first book, I wrote about a hospital out of London where they were having problems transferring people from recovery, you know, from surgery to recovery, and people were dying. And they tried everything. You know, you look at your manuals, this is what we're supposed to do. You go through your checklist, this is what we're supposed to do. And the couple of the leaders were watching a Formula one race car event one night, and they're, they're watching them take apart the Ferrari, five seconds, seven seconds, you know, put it right back and no problems. And they're thinking, well, why are we having so much problem delivering patients from here to here when they can do that so quickly? So these guys thought, well, let's just bring in the Ferrari team to the hospital and have them look at how we're doing things. And a lot of people don't do that. They don't get that. Fresh eyes. They don't go outside their industries. They don't think like that. But it made a huge difference. Unless people were dying. They didn't recognize that people were talking over each other, but weren't maybe repeating the same things to the right people or they weren't as efficient as they should have been. And they wouldn't have seen that had they not brought in an outside party. And that's why consultants and coaches are so important, because you get an outside perspective, you get somebody coming in going, why? Why are you doing that? Because as you said, that it reminded me of the very famous study that I often tell people about, because I think it was so interesting about how people just go along with rules, random rules, for no reason, right? So this woman, she went in to a doctor's office thinking she's getting her eyes examined. And instead it was a thought experiment to see how people go along with what everybody else does. Right? And so every couple minutes, everybody around her were actors. They would ring a bell and everybody stood up and sat down with no explanation whatsoever while she's sitting there. And after only three times, she gets up and she sits down with them. Right, we're gonna do that. And so they found this really fascinating. They all kept getting up and sitting down and they thought, well, let's just get rid of everybody around or take them back as if they're getting their eyes examined and see what she does when she's alone. So what do you think she does when the bell rings?

Oh, she stood up.

So they thought, well, let's put in some real patience with her and see what happens there. So they added some patience. And bell rings. She gets up and she sits down. The guy looks at her next door and says, why did you do that? She goes, well, everybody else was doing it. I thought I was supposed to. Bell rings. What do you think he does? Right? So everybody, we're doing this at work. We're standing up, we're sitting down for a bell, and we have no idea why, because it's social learning and it's comfortable.

It's so disturbing. You think about why. You know, when I'm talking to people that are considering a coach for the first time, I think there's. There's a couple conversations that are going on for them internally, right? One is, should I have a coach at all? And then the other one is, what kind of coach? Which coach? And I think people aren't really clear that almost any coach, right? Like, you know, provided you're. You're not challenged, mentally challenged, like you could think you can observe something. You have any background is useful because they're going to look at it with fresh eyes, right? They're going to look at your business with some fresh eyes. They're going to look at you, your team, your behaviors. And there is going to be a certain amount of challenging and curiosity. But then the next thing they do is like, I really need somebody who understands SAS or I need somebody who understands biotech, or like, they'll want, like an industry expert. And then the industry expert comes in, isn't curious about, is used to seeing all the things that you do and gives you the same old solutions. Everybody in the industry has, stop doing that. Like, get somebody.

I mean. Yeah, yeah. It's very frustrating for a lot of people because one thing I get asked a lot is, what do you do if your leader doesn't encourage a level of curiosity in the company? You know, and if you can't, it's just so hard because if it's not at the top like that, a lot of leaders at the top try to filter down this culture, right? And you can't really filter it up as easily if a leader doesn't buy into it. So it's up to coaches and people like us to go to these companies, you know, and what I find that the people who hire me already get it. A lot of times they know that they need to develop this culture, but the ones who don't get it, they hold on to it. And that's when you get all the company examples that where they crash and burn because they, they want to hold on so badly to these ideas that they had because it works in the past and what works in the past does not continue to work in the future. Because.

Right. And then, well, look, your industry can get wiped out. Everybody's worried today about whether the company, their job is going to get wiped out by AI. And, and I, who knows, like, it's, it's, it's so early, but it's going to be so unsettling. But you notice different reactions with the advent of, of AI art. We saw artists who were like, oh, this is terrible. Then others who like used it, right. And, and they're, they're making a lot less noise. They're just using it and adapting to it. And I think we see that again and again. Companies. There I had a company recently that a client company that, that is failing or has failed and they tech business, of all things, and they were like, no, AI. We're dead fast against AI. Like, okay, like there's the next last nail in your coffin, right?

Like, like Kodak with their digital photography, right? We, we know this is something better, but we don't want to cannibalize our products. And it's just, it happens all the time that it, they think what worked in the past is going to continue to make them beyond touchable because they were so great in the past. And it's just so hard for companies sometimes to see what's going to happen. When I sold computers in the 80s, everybody freaked out. You know, they're like, this is gonna take my job. I'm gonna never have anything. And it took jobs, you know, but it made, you know, we have social media managers now. Who would have thought there'd be such a thing as a social media manager? You don't know that, right? So you don't know what it's going to create. It's going to change things. I mean, we've seen the creativity side you mentioned, you know, some of the things, the artists and all that. I mean you saw that, that they took George Carlin, they took his voice and his likeness and they did a whole platform of what he would have normally said in all the thing that's going on in today's world and how it really got a sense of humor. It was fascinating. The voice was a little off, but it was kind of interesting to see. Of course he got sued for doing it because it was his likeness and his, his sense of whatever he thought was funny. But I think they worked that out since. But it's going to be interesting to see how it impacts the, the creative, the creative side. But you need, I mean right now, of course it's, it's got so many issues. You're going to need the people who can help it become more in certain directions or give it the right prompts. I mean, prompting is the big thing right now. You're going to prompt managers that do nothing but prompting, I'm sure, because if you don't ask it the right thing.

I think actually the prompt manager job is already over. I was noticing and looking at, at prompting recently and I had somebody share with my group and I'm like, you know what? You don't. If you just start a conversation because I'm thinking about this, I'm worried about that. And then you can actually evolve the prompt whereas in the thing you had to write it a very specific way, but it's iterating so fast. So let's talk actually about some of those examples of companies who failed to do it. I was at a group of hedge funds and stuff and some investor folks in San Francisco years ago and they were talking about different companies and Google was fairly new on the scene and people were worried about what it would do. And I was asked whether Yahoo or Google, where would I place my money and what did I think? And I said that when. Well, I think the technology innovation, the approach to the search is admirable, but Yahoo could simply copy the approach that Google's doing and they'll be fine and they've got the brand power and they already have the traffic. And so I said, I think I put my money on Yahoo. And I guess that turned out not to be.

Well, copying doesn't usually help too much. Sometimes if you do it exactly the same. Right. You know, it's like MySpace wasn't exactly the same as Facebook. You have people that can take one idea and improve on it. And it's like I mentioned digital, but it's the Blockbuster kind of situation with Netflix. If you think what you've created in the past, your Blockbuster Video is the only thing that anybody's ever going to want. And these other people offer you this idea and you pass on it because nobody's ever going to beat you. That's when you get these stories of massive failures. I mean some of it's leadership, you know, it's, some of it is just that it worked in the past and, and now with Moore's Law and everything else that came out, that everything was doubling and all these Ideas were changing. People have realized that they can't stay static. You, I mean, I've taught at universities that were tech schools and I, I learned from all my techie geek students. I love them because I didn't hear all these crazy things that they were coming up with. And if you're not, if you don't have the curiosity to keep up with what's coming out and what's the next thing, then you're just going to get run over. And I see it all the time with that buying into the confirmation bias, wanting to do the same kinds of things. And a lot of it is leaders get it from their past leaders. They've learned how to lead from maybe somebody who was in there, from Peter Principal that got, you know, made to his, promoted to his level of incompetence or her level of incompetence. And so you, some, you have to surround yourself with people who know more than you do. And whether it's a coach or consultant or whatever, you really need to have that kind of outside who's smarter than I am. If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in a bad spot. You want to surround yourself with really smart and interesting people. And when I was on the board of Advisors at DocuSign, it was one of the coolest things to be in this group because there was like 250 of us and there was like McDonald's and Sony and you know, every single thing you could think of, the CEOs and smart people. And it was Keith Brock, the former CEO and chairman, who put this group together because he would say, hey, I don't know all this, I need, you know, and he wouldn't just have the CEOs, he'd have people like me when I had my radio show, or he'd have people like, you know, different types of people. And so he would get a variety to get different perspectives. And if you do that, it's a really very smart way to see what you don't know. And I think a lot of companies don't do that.

Yeah, like getting a glimpse into and looking in places that you're not comfortable looking at what you don't know. I think in our many companies in general, but for sure, around the tech companies that I've worked with, this like need to be the smartest person in the room. Like competing intellectually is so prevalent, so overwhelming. And I think it's like awkward kids who were trying to prove that they had something and like trying to best each other Intellectually. And then they grew up and they're in business. And, like, that's not where we're gonna really work well together. It's not how we're gonna innovate and be smart and that kind of thing. By always trying to say, well, I know that, I know that. I know that I know. And yet it's. It's a. Like, I do it. Like, we all do it, right? I don't think anybody is free of trying to show that you know something, that you're relevant. And yet it. It's not the powerful place to look. Right. Like, setting aside is powerful.

It's tough because you, you know, it's that. The imposter syndrome, you want. You don't want to look like that. You haven't been up on everything you're supposed to be up on, but you can't know everything. There's just. This is impossible. You know, it's. And to try and look like you do. One of the worst things. When I was in sales, you know, they taught us. I mean, I worked in sales for decades, from everything from pharmaceutical sales to mortgages to whatever I sold, right? The worst thing you could do is pretend you knew something you didn't, you know, and if they ask you something and you just tried to fake it, you total. You lost complete credibility. And it was some. They always told you, you know, say, hey, I don't know the answer to that, but I'll find out, and I'll get back to you immediately, you know, kind of thing. And look how much better you look if you do that. Right?

You know, it's very freeing. Like, there's a huge area that people commonly talk about, especially men. Sports. Professional sports, right? I could. I really don't care. I'm not interested. And people talk about it, and I smile and I nod for a minute because they're interested, and then they'll say something, and I'll be like, yeah, I don't follow the NFL. Or, like, I notice. I hear about it when people are in the playoffs, and I'm like, oh, that's cool. And I might watch a few things. But, like, you know, my friend likes tomorrow. He's. He's even worse than I am. And he's like, it's all sportball. So, like, I. It's just not an area that I care about, you know, that much. But. But it's very liberating to say, oh, yeah, I don't.

Do you know that because you've watched it and given it attempt, or do you have that thought process because you. You were, you know, forced to watch a lot of it as a child or. You know what I mean? I'm curious if you've tried it again in your older age, if you find it.

Look, I. I had a professional relationship with the Chicago Cubs, with Mike Ditka. I had tickets to the Bulls during the Jordan years. And I appreciate the game. I appreciate sports well played. I love it. I just don't really want to be a spectator in life. A little bit of it. I'd like to go out and play, to run, to swim, to sail. And I will watch a little bit of professional sailing. I'll watch a little. But I'd rather surf than watch surfing. So I like professional sports players who are going to make more money than me. Is irritating.

Well, I was just like you. I loved Barkley when he was in the NBA. And I watched it for a while, but then I kind of just. I gave it a shot. I got over it. And I just, you know, I think that's what we want people to do. We want to make sure you give it a shot. This is something you. You might be interested in. And the problem is a lot of people tell themselves that they're not going to be interested because I looked at this when I was younger and it was stupid or, you know, I'm not going to be good at it or whatever it is. I'm like you. I want to be out there doing it. And so I. I try things. I'm terrible at a lot of it. I can, but I try. My golf swing's not as bad as Charles Barkley's, but I can do some things that are just to try it, you know, And I think a lot of people don't do that. And that's what I'm trying to get people to think about. And a lot of companies are good at showcasing their people who are very curious. I did some work with Verizon. They did some great stuff there. And I'd like to see some companies do this kind of thing. I went to their New York office and made these little videos of some of their. Well, I talked two or three minutes about the value of curiosity. But then they brought in all these people from their company who were successful, who got this really sense of. I developed a sense of curiosity, and it helped me this look at where I ended up in the company kind of stories. And they use these in all their onboarding courses. And they. And all their. They played it throughout all their offices and everything. So everybody knew that we value this sense of curiosity. And that's what I love, is sharing this to get people past that voice in our heads saying, I'm not going to be interested in this and this is going to be something that's too hard or I'm scared. And having companies get behind this kind of thinking and, and realizing we need to figure out what's holding people back. And that's what my research was about. What, what holds people back and so that they can move forward. It's. It's.

As you speak, it feels like. Or I'm noticing that there's a. There's a, like a fundamental thing for kids about looking good. Right. Like, somewhere we become aware of others in the world around us, and then we're worried about not looking good and, and leaning into things where. And I think there's a decision there. Like, I can't get curious. I can't try. I can't look into this because this is an area, like, I don't. I don't. I don't look good. And I. And I know, like, specifically art is one. At some point I decided I'm. I'm not an artist. I'm not good at art, like that kind of thing. I know I'm creative. Right. And then years ago, I was going through some stuff from my. And I come across these, like, childhood drawings and things, this, you know, kids artwork. And I'm like, pretty good.

Yeah.

Like, at what point? And then I could kind of. With a little bit of thinking about it. Remember that I decided I wasn't like that and I wasn't good and that girls were better at art than boys. Right. And like, thinking of this is like a very early childhood thought.

Yeah.

And it's absurd on the surface of it, but. But that's girly and girls are better. And. And I'm pretty sure that at some point some teacher was discouraging or favored somebody else. I have, like a vague notion of that. And I chose out, you know, like.

Okay, well, you're walking right into my research there. You know that. By suggesting these things, because that's what I researched was the factors that inhibit curiosity. I don't know if you want to go into that now, but you're. You're.

Please. Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. Curious.

Yeah. Because a lot of what you're saying is what I was trying to figure out. So halfway through writing my first book, I thought, well, I got to fix this. So I'm going to have to create an assessment to determine the things that inhibit curiosity because if you don't know, how are you supposed to fix it? And there wasn't anybody out there that had created that. So I'm worked on this for years, spent, you know, all this time serving thousands of people to find out what keeps us from being curious. And I found that there were four things and you just hit on a few of them right there. But the four things are the acronym of fate to help you remember it. So fear assumptions. Really that voice in your head, which you just covered a lot of that voice in your head. Technology, which is the over and underutilization of IT and environment, which is also the teachers and things you mentioned. You know, it's not just your teachers or your parents. It could have been your sibling that told you that was the dumbest picture they've ever seen. Or it could be whatever, you know, it could even be social media. Now, you don't want to put something out there so it doesn't give you enough likes. Oh, it's awful. You take it down. So there's all these factors that was really, it was fascinating to me to see how much for fear. You know, we're all telling ourselves, I'm not going to ask a question in a meeting because I'm going to look stupid, that I didn't prepare or that nobody else is thinking this or, you know, we all know the fear factor, right, we get that. But a lot of that fear, you know, ties into the assumptions which you were saying. You know, I'm, I didn't think I was good at that. I didn't even try it because I knew, I told myself this or that. Right. That voice in your head that says, I can't do it, it's too hard, I've done it before. So they're just going to make me the head of this committee and not pay me for it. They're going to. Whatever it is you tell yourself of why you don't want to do the next step was the second factor. And then the technology one surprised me a lot because I, I hadn't really thought about technology and it was over and underutilization of it. So a lot of people who take the assessment think they're going to come in great because they can, they know how to use technology. But, you know, yeah, you think, oh, those are the people who don't do as well sometimes because they either don't have the foundation behind it, they don't know why it works that way, or they use it so much that, you know, this research shows that ChatGPT and those kinds of systems actually helped people who weren't so. So good do better. But if you were a smart person and you really started using chat, you started to rely on it too much, and then your natural extra stuff kind of faded away so that, you know, there can be an overuse and an underuse. And if I threw Einstein a calculator, didn't teach him how it worked, he'd be a great calculator worker, but, you know, maybe not the rest. So, so we need to get that foundation and then make sure you don't overutilize it in killing your natural critical thinking and all those skills, right? And then the last one, environment, the cruel siblings, which I know a lot of us had, you know, teachers, friends, coworkers, your past boss, current boss, you know, everybody you've ever had any relationship with in your entire life is your environment. And the current environment maybe doesn't encourage curiosity at work. And so people just come in. Walking Dead and just, you know, time to make the Donuts is a famous commercial from my childhood. You just, every day you just do the same thing over and over again. And so it, it's just, it was an interesting thing. I was really honored that Thinkers50 recognized my work as, you know, this unique thing because it's that no one had done this. And so when I work with consultants and speakers and people like, you know, the. That train people for a living, you know, I certify people to do, to give this assessment because I can't be everywhere. But I. I really find that when I give this to organizations, that aha moment is just so cool to see when they, they look at their own factors. Usually when I train people, they spend the first part of the day going over their own, you know, four factors. And then we create an action plan and all that to overcome them. But then after they figure out their own situations, I have them work on the company's situation, right? Like if they're struggling with innovation or whatever, if their communication, whatever their problems are, because once they understand their own issues, they're able to help the company. And I took that from a Disney playbook thing. You know, I mean, Disney had gone to people a long time ago and they were having laundry service employees quitting, like, left and right. And you think, as exciting as that job is, why would they be leaving, right? But they, they thought, well, we'll ask them, what can we do to make your job better? And just by asking a simple question like that, they found out all kinds of ideas and saved them a Lot of money. Because people would say things like, put an air vent over my desk so I'm not so hot and make my desk go up and down so my back doesn't hurt. And if you go to your employees and you ask these kinds of questions, you get the answers that you don't even know that you can get from them. And so that's how I work with companies. You know, I do it a little bit. You know, work with employees. And then you can get all this feedback you give to employees. You make HR look wonderful because they come back with this report of all the ways to fix things. Leaders get, you know, things to solve problems. I mean, simple things happen from just employee, just ideas. Think of chocolate chip cookie dough. Ben and Jerry's made so much money from having in a suggestion board, somebody goes, hey, why don't you put some cookie dough in your ice cream? Wow. You know what I mean? You think about it. It doesn't take much.

Yeah. My mind is swimming with many things, but I think about this challenge of asking why, like, I got hired to coach a company a few years ago that successfully sold since. But they brought. The initial thing was like, we need to get better at hiring people. In the heart of all the things that you talk about in the world of people, like, we want to get better at hiring and retaining people. Like, okay. And it was a big lift. Like, they wanted to hire, like 400amonth, right? And I'm like, oh, I love this. I don't think I've ever worked on hiring at that pace before, but I'm game. And I'm never shy about launching into something I don't know anything about. So I start working with them. And then I'm like, so wait, why you don't. You're not planning to keep all these people. You're hiring this many because you're churning them really fast. And they're like, well, yeah, it's our company in our industry. It's really normal.

And.

And I'm like, okay, well, let's look at how do we keep people around? And so then like, yeah, we've already been working at that for a while. And. And we tried all these things, and they. They don't work, and we don't want to work on that anymore. I'm like, okay, good. Who stays? Like. Like, of all the people you hire, you didn't turn all of them. So what are the sorts of people that stay? And they're like, I don't know. Like, the people who stay, stay. And I'M like figure out that and then let's try to hire more of those and less of the others. Let's, let's not try to hire the volume, but get better at that attraction and selection. And that actually turned out to be useful. Right, because they were hiring all kinds of people who were just a bad fit for the company. Like they, they were in their industry, but they liked like small independent companies. They didn't like a big company. And like those people are never going to work with you because you're pretty big in corporate. Things are highly structured around here and it makes for efficiency, but it doesn't make them happy. Right. Like they're. Yeah. So fascinating, really challenging digging into things like. And that led to some useful innovation. Before we run out of time, why don't you just tell us about Novartis and what happened there?

Oh, well, I've worked with a lot of companies from, you know, I give the Curiosity code to different companies. EO was one I gave the assessment to. But Novartis is one that is a great example of just a company that embraces the culture of curiosity. Make sure everybody knows it the way Verizon made people know. Novartis had. They would pay for 100 hours a year of just any kind of training and education and things to make employees more curious. They had Curiosity Month every September where they bring in hundreds of us to speak. I was one of many speakers that they would bring in to come and share different ideas. And everybody could pick and choose all the different training stations that they wanted to listen to for that time when that was going on. And it was really important that they made sure everybody could choose the things that fascinated them. And they also, what I liked is they had employees who would give mini kind of TED talks, like those salon talks. Instead of hiring somebody like you or me to come in to talk, they would have their employees do it. And anybody has ever taught any courses will tell you the best way to learn something is to, to teach it. Right. And, and you, you learn, you prepare and you find things that you didn't even know you knew when you start to do that. And so they would let them pick a topic that interested them and would be helpful to everybody else. So everybody learned in the process. So they did a lot of that kind of things. And they actually measured engagement prior to doing Curiosity. Culture changes and after. And they found it moved the needle dramatically. And it goes along with the research I just published about a month where I studied C suite executives and asked them, you know, how Much has culture of curiosity impacted your engagement, innovation, all the different things. And what I found was very similar to what they found in my research. It was a small study. It was 51 C suite executives was across all the different areas in the United States. And they found that if there were small or medium sized companies, they saved over 100,000 a year minimum. And if they were a large company size, they saved over a million. I mean, 80% of the small companies and Medium found that and 100% of the large companies saved. And you know, I didn't even ask them how much more they saved than a million. So it's very interesting to me it was just an initial ground research because nobody's doing this and I want companies to do more of this. And if you're thinking of doing more of this, I want them to do it because I think everybody does some research on their own, but then they don't publish it. And even Novartis did their own research about the engagement. But I don't see it out there. I would love to see more out there because every once in a while, you know, when I talk to somebody, they go, well, where's the research? Well, you know, there isn't any. Which is. After arguing with Chat GPT for a long time, I found out the reason it doesn't help tell me what it is is because nobody's publishing it and we need it out there. And I think it's so important for people who need to quantify things. It's out there. People have done it.

You know, that secondary research today with chat GPT3O in particular. But like just all the deep research, it's really fascinating how quickly you can just do a wide survey. I remember one year I got paid to be a research assistant for a college professor overseas. And I like, you know, I read scores of books and research and made him little reference cards for work he was doing on political science. And I am like, what a job. That it? But today I could do that whole thing that I spent, you know, half a year doing. I could do that in minutes today.

It's the wildest thing, isn't it?

All the citations. Yeah. And like getting into that, like some of the most interesting exchanges that I'm having on behalf of myself or clients lately are like, hey, help me understand myself or how do I compare to this? Or what are we doing that's unique? Like, it used to be you could only research public companies with any depth because that was where the data is. But today, like looking at smaller Private companies, individuals even like you can get fascinating things because it taps into such a big world and can do that. And I love hearing about companies developing that. We think about a Novartis dedicating time and money for something. Right. In a consistent, scheduled, ritualized way. And when we talk to small companies they often say, well that that'll be fine when we get big, but we can't do that right now. And yet I know because I cut such a big range of company size that even the small ones will do like a weekly lunch and learn and the weekly lunch and learn. You might show up and tell us about your hobby and fencing, I don't know, or whatever your hobby is. Pick two random things and like we'd all be fascinated and then we might see something interesting. Right. You think about like the, the structure of DNA is revealed in a dream of two snakes to someone like a random thing like that, like bringing in some curiosity. So you might talk about fencing and I think about something that relates to our customer relationships.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, fencing would be a great group team and building up activity. You'd learn about a lot of different things. So you don't know what it is that people are going to be interested in that could open up the doors. Like you said, just unbelievable ideas.

Yeah. Well, so if you want to check out the book, books and more about our work. DrDianeHamilton Dr. Diane Hamilton.com is the website this is. We could keep talking for a while but we'll lose our audience here. So probably a good place to wrap it. Hopefully we've got people's interest piqued. They're curious now and, and they want to know a little more, a little bit more. It's easy for me to say. Drdyanilson.com thanks for joining us today and spending a few minutes to talk about. This is awesome. Great conversation.

Thank you so much, Bill. This was so much fun. I love how curious you are.

Yes. And if you want to know more, like subscribe, turn on your notifications, get it wherever it is now or go to scalingcoach.com more than 630 shows now. So there's something on every topic to do with people. Strategy, execution, cash or you, the one in the mirror who's maybe sometimes too much of a lid on your business. How could you take that lid off and level up and break through and not have to work so hard to grow faster? ScalingCoach.com is where big shout out and thanks to our mutual friend, my mentor, Vern Harnish. Who created this whole scaling up framework, without whom none of this would have been necessary. Thanks to Anna Codena, who produce our show. Returning producer. Now with this show and beyond from. From our past coming back again. Delighted to have Anna back. Thanks again everyone for watching, for listening. Until next time. Keep scaling. We'll talk to you again soon.