Forbes contributor Erika Andersen, in her article, made a fascinating claim: that in order to succeed at pretty much anything, you need to be curious. According to her, it's absolutely dangerous for any person or organization to lack curiosity because this deficiency in interest leads to professional stagnation.  It's especially true these days, when technological and industrial paradigms seem to shift constantly.

Steps towards curiosity

Anderson states that in order to foster curiosity in your life, you need to:

• Take a page from the young ones – Kids tend to interact with the world openly, with absolute anticipation of learning something new. Children, especially small children, often throw themselves into experiences to see what would happen. They don't anticipate pain or failure; they just marvel at the new thing they’re discovering.

• Ask important questions – We all ask questions, but that doesn't mean that we're asking the questions that really make a difference. More often than not, we avoid the important questions like "Why not do this?" because they're difficult to answer.  But it is absolutely essential that we face these queries and try to explore answers that we've never considered before.

• Build a mixed team – Many think that it's much more productive to be around "yes men" and other people who speak the same language as they do. But in the long run, we really can't expect to make progress or learn something valuable if everyone approaches problems the same way.

• Accept your shortcomings – Everyone has shortcomings, and we can't be expected to know everything about every single thing.  As tempting as it is to NOT show any kind of weakness to ourselves, we have to avoid the pitfall of acting like we have all the answers.  The only way we can evolve is to accept that we HAVE TO evolve.

If you think about it, curiosity has always been part of company success

What Anderson has stated in her article is remarkably obvious, despite the fact that some businessmen have somehow failed to understand and exercise it consistently.

There is always curiosity at the beginning of any venture – entrepreneurs often explore the viability of a business idea before they deploy it to the general public. Without curiosity, we wouldn't have effective information search methods in the form of Google. We wouldn't have great file sharing options like DropBox. We wouldn't be enjoying this absolutely exciting and progressive time.

These all came about because people started asking questions, explored the possibilities, worked with other minds, and understood the limitations of the status quo.

What we should really get out of that article

The real challenge that we have to face now, if we want to succeed for a long time, is to make our curiosity sustainable. What separates the truly successful companies from the ones that are waning in influence is the ability to stay inquisitive long after the initial goal has been accomplished.

The steps Anderson has laid out is an excellent blueprint for what independent professionals and businessmen should do in order to keep serving the market as it should be served.

Author bio:
Monique Jones is an Engineer who deals with telephone systems. Besides being an Engineer, she also works as a part time writer. She helps her colleagues and other people about their communication issues, giving effective solutions to address their needs.

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