Humancentricity – focusing our design and building of everything to meet the needs of humans first – is catching on: human-centric design is fueling social engineering, moving past use only in the tech world, and coloring our every experience. No longer relegated to only the smartest or coolest among us: it’s the new standard of quality and excellence. And I’m curious about that.
Truthfully, I can only give language to any of this because of the great minds and mentors I’ve met along the path. But it took something in me to place myself in their trajectory, and that brings me to the idea of being a curious conversationalist.
Every great idea I have ever had has been ignited or inspired by another human being that knew something I did not, that had experienced something I never had, and who was willing to share themselves in ways few ever do.
Brian Grazer’s new book A Curious Mind helps explain why.
Grazer’s book offers a uniquely candid look inside wisdom gleaned from what Grazer calls curious conversations.
His story portrays a kind of role model approach to boldly throwing yourself at human beings in ways that allows us to discover and learn in a constant state of movement and flow, expanding and cultivating our creativity around conversations with people who inspire us or make us curious. This, Grazer contends, leads to creativity and innovation that can’t be reached as readily by non-curious minds.
It strikes me that narcissists and dogmatic people suffer from a lack of curiosity (among other things).
Grazer’s penchant for gifting that creativity and wisdom forward with others and synthesizing it into his successes is a case study for how to live a powerfully successful life.
Perhaps the big takeaway is that when we raise our kids to be people who live their lives in curious conversation – we also raise human beings who have deep respect for the experiences of others. When people respect others this way, this tends to foster curiosity.
Perhaps there’s a connection to be made between curious conversationalists and designing a better world – because innovators who think from a place of humancentricity begin their quests with the “how might we” question, and they have respect for that process in execution of the beautiful solutions they find. We get to some fairly amazing outcomes through the “how might we” looking glass.
The world is very curious. It is becoming curiouser and curiouser.
Maybe you should, too.
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For a look-see on a regular-sized curious mind, meet Andrew Lee. He is raising sons to have curious minds, and helps us to explore our own.
tracy saville 