Learning from Curious George

Remember Curious George, the curious little monkey? When I was much younger I read about Curious George in books from our local library - nowadays Curious George has his own TV show!

Enough of the trip down memory lane! I was reading an interview with Jim Collins today. You most probably know Jim as the author of the fantastically successful book Good To Great. He is credited with the following quote :

Be like Curious George, start with a question and look under the yellow hat to find what's there.

It is said that as Jim Collins began research into Level 5 Leadership, he assembled a team of young researchers which he called the "Chimps". They were given this name as chimps are unruly, irreverent, energetic, creative and, most of all, inquisitive. The team began pasting pictures of Curious George all over the board room as a reminder to keep asking questions and to keep open minds. Altogether, 21 Chimps worked on the job, usually five per year, performing such tasks as analyzing stock-price statistics, gathering articles, scheduling and conducting interviews, doing massive amounts of coding, and fact checking the numbers in the book. They read and coded every published article they could find about the 11 good-to-great companies, while researching 17 other companies they had selected for comparison. This team of Chimps held collective responsibility for decisions made and were totally committed to the task.

I believe two major issues raise themselves here :

1) Entrepreneurs who desire to build successful businesses need to keep asking questions. They need to have an intrinsic discontent for the status quo. They also require an open mind for solutions that may not fit into their paradigms.

2) Business owners need to surround themselves with a team of key people who are also not afraid of asking the difficult questions and who are open to new ideas and solutions.

What questions are you asking? Are you open to new suggestions, ideas, criticism? Is the idea of a team of "Curious Georges" a little scary for you? Are there questions you are avoiding because you know you won't like the answers?