Curiosity as a Strategy
Jack Lemmon by by Abe Frajndlich
When the world feels like it's on fire - which is often - our instinct is to most often either freeze in panic or rush to socials.
Political bullies. Tariff-panic trade wars. Climate crisis headlines. Cost of living spikes. Political polarisation that makes collaboration seem impossible. There’s a heavy helping of bad news around to choose from. Pick one?
Personally and professionally, many of us understandably respond to these challenges with either despair-led doom-scrolling or knee-jerk solutions (emails, meetings, campaigns, posts) that solve very little irl.
But what if bad news isn't a reason to panic or posture, but instead an invitation to get curious?
What if the most powerful strategy isn't having all the answers, but asking better questions?
Warren Berger, in "A More Beautiful Question," notes that "In times of change, leaders need to be expert questioners." The most powerful response to troubling news isn't despair or defensive certainty, it's genuine curiosity.
"The most creative, successful business leaders have tended to be expert questioners…They're questioning the fundamental assumptions that everyone else takes for granted." Warren Berger
Let’s look at the fashion industry for example: when faced with concerning data about the industry’s environmental impact, two response patterns typically show up:
The Overwhelmed: "The problem is too big. What difference can we possibly make?"
The Defensive: "We're already doing everything we can, look at our sustainability page!"
Neither stance creates meaningful change. A curious approach asks different questions entirely:
"What if facing this challenge contains hidden opportunities?"
"What assumptions about our business model might we need to reconsider?"
"What would success look like here?"
Getting Playful with Problems
Bad news often triggers seriousness. Gravity. Formality. The opposite of play. But paradoxically, play might be precisely what we need when facing our biggest challenges.
When Zalando, Tommy Hilfiger and All is for All approached adaptive fashion (which I had the privilege of working on), we began with curiosity about a "problem": fashion wasn't serving disabled customers. Rather than approaching this solemnly, we got playful with potential solutions. Spoke to the right people, asked the big questions.
What came out of it wasn't bullshit charity or performative content, it was innovative design with the functionality to genuinely serve new audiences.
Seek out the big challenges and get curious if you want to make meaningful change.
As Einstein noted (cited in Cambridge's "Be Curious" report), it was "passionate curiosity rather than special talents" that drove his scientific discoveries. Now, I’m not saying a little curiosity and we’ll all be mini-Einsteins but when confronting difficulties, curiosity creates the mental space for imagination to flourish.
There’s some good news.
Imagination aka The Bridge from Bad News to Better Futures
Simon Sinek's famous "Start with Why" framework offers a valuable starting point, but in times of crisis, we need to push further. As Sinek says, "People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it." But when entire industries face existential crises, questioning your "why" might be the only path forward.
Back to Warren Berger and his beautifully simple framework. When in doubt, ask:
Why?: Question everything, especially what "everyone knows" about your industry. Why do we need another collab collection? Why do supply chains work this way?
What If? Play with possibilities. Once curiosity has kicked open the mental space door, get playful on purpose. What if sustainability wasn't a reverse engineered add-on but the baked-in business model? What if the primary metric wasn't growth?
How?: Get action-oriented. Only after asking ‘Why’ and ‘What If’ can we start to get practical and ask ourselves: How might we actually bring this to life?
Get Curious
Next time you encounter troubling news about the world today, which let’s face it will probably be 2 minutes after reading this. Try this instead of panicking:
Set aside a block of time, say 30 minutes or so for pure curiosity. No solutions allowed, just questions. Write down at least 20 questions about the situation, pushing yourself beyond the obvious.
There are no silly questions.
Then identify the question that feels most uncomfortable, most challenging to your assumptions. That one’s the path to imagination.
At the end of the day, the world is ultra bonkers and panic posting, doomscrolling and escapism won’t get us out of it. But curiousity might. It’s the bridge to new ideas and imagining actions required for whatever better future we might create.
We don’t need another performative pledge or wishy-washy campaign. We need people brave enough to ask the questions nobody's asking, playful enough to imagine what nobody's imagining, and stubborn enough to build what everyone else claims is impossible.
So. What's the uncomfortable question you need to get curious with?