Curiosity Saves the Leader

By Sander A. Flaum

Curiosity may have killed the cat—but it saves the leader. Because as a leader, if you’re not curious enough to learn something new everyday, you’re dead. In William Safire’s final Op-Ed column for the NY Times on January 24, 2005, he wrote, “Here’s why I’m outta here: in an interview 50 years before, the aging adman Bruce Barton told me something like Watson’s [referring here to James Watson, who along with Francis Crick won the Nobel prize for discovering the structure of DNA] advice about the need to keep trying something new, which I punched up into ‘when you’re through changing, you’re through.’”

At 75, after 3,000 Op-Ed pieces, Safire moved on to serve as a chairman of the DANA Alliance, a Washington, D.C.-based international organization committed to bringing the latest insights of neuroscience to the public through educational programs, articles and books that make academic language plain and accessible to all. From syllables to synapses, Safire embraced his new challenge with gusto, asserting, “We can quit a job, but we quit fresh involvement at our mental peril.”

Leadership and, particularly, successful leadership, can be a trap that drives one right off the road of progress and into the ditch of complacency. If you’re working your way up, or failing on a regular basis, the motivation to learn something new everyday and embrace change makes sense. But if all is going well, what is your motivation to keep learning and changing as necessary?

Scientists have found that brains that do not continue to learn new things atrophy faster over time. “Use it or lose it” has morphed from cliché to fact. When I headed up the Becker agency I told my people that they should be learning something new every day and that it could come from any source at any time. The value I put on learning required my people to be curious. We didn’t run daily seminars or bring in consultants weekly, yet I’d often walk around and ask people, “What new thing have you learned today?” The responsibility to learn was theirs--we’d encourage it and supplement it through our internal “Becker College of Knowledge” and our “reverse mentorship program”-- but more than a program, it was a personal attitude we were trying to cultivate, a curiosity about new things that stretched people beyond their immediate job responsibilities.

For adults, change can be an alarming prospect. No book sums up the situation as clearly and succinctly as Spencer Johnson’s 1998 runaway bestseller Who Moved My Cheese? But would change be nearly as frightening for adults if we would remember a lesson we learned as children from that other runaway bestseller Curious George? Curious George was never afraid to try something new. Did he get into lots of trouble along the way? Of course. But he also taught us how much fun it is to set off on an exciting new adventure. How can we transform our adult fear of change back into our child-like curiosity about learning things we never knew existed? To begin, we have to get back in touch with how joyful it is to learn something new.

Children aren’t interested in ROI or 360-degree feedback; they learn simply because it is fun and because they love a challenge. We have to ask ourselves when and why we lost that same impulse. Do we hesitate to try out new things because we don’t want to feel like beginners again, or admit we may not be experts in everything? Thinking like a beginner has its benefits: it puts us in touch with the new hire and helps us understand him better; it allows us to see our area of expertise--and consequently the entire organization—through new eyes.

In the course of interviewing leaders across a variety of industries, I found that nearly all of the successful ones were intensely curious individuals who valued learning something new daily. Howard Safir is a prime example. After seven years on the streets of New York City as an undercover agent putting away drug dealers, he moved to a desk job in Washington, D.C. Because of his success, he was soon called upon to head up the newly established Witness Protection Program. After learning the new language of witness protection and mastering it, he was chosen to head up the U.S. Marshall Service and then, in a surprising turn, after a long career in police work, he accepted the post, at Mayor Giuliani’s bidding, to head up the New York Fire Department. He was later appointed as New York City Police Commissioner, blending his lifetime knowledge of police work with his love for New York.

This extraordinary leader’s latest incarnation is as CEO and chairman of SafirRossetti, a top corporate intelligence security firm. Safir’s secret is that he never got caught up in his own success. What continually motivates him is the challenge and fun of learning something new. After retiring from the NYPD job he might have been expected to sail off into the sunset (he is an avid sailor) or at least into another government position. But instead, he opted for a new challenge – that of the entrepreneur. He partnered with former corporate security chief of IBM, Joseph Rossetti, to begin his company, SafirRossetti. And even there the journey continues, from entrepreneur to major corporate CEO in short order and from one NYC office to offices all over the world. His motivation and drive come from an unbounded, insatiable curiosity to learn new things.

All of this leads me back to our old friend Curious George. In the tale Curious George Rides a Bike, George is given the simple instruction to deliver newspapers. Instead, he makes paper boats out of them. I urge leaders everywhere to use George as a role model—to choose curiosity over convention. Throw caution to the wind, learn something new, turn newspapers into boats. Who knows what marvelous feats you’ll accomplish?

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Author Bio: Sander A. Flaum is managing partner, Flaum Partners, Inc., and chairman, Fordham Leadership Forum, Fordham Graduate School of Business. He is co-author, with his son Jonathon A. Flaum, of the upcoming book The 100-Mile Walk—A Father and Son on a Quest to Find the Essence of Leadership (AMACOM, 2006). Contact him at sflaum@flaumpartners.com.