Talent development professionals continue to face significant challenges maintaining strong internal bench strength due to skill shortages in the existing workforce, demographic shifts, and labor mobility, according to the Association for Talent Development's Building a Talent Development Structure. These pressures reflect a larger volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) landscape.

Companies respond in different ways to VUCA conditions. Some simplify their hiring and development processes through systems and technology. Others build sophisticated in-house expertise capable of handling complex problems. Still others rely on best practices gleaned from the Best Companies to Work For.

The problem is that these solutions typically address only certain aspects of the challenges stemming from VUCA environments. In Reframing Organizations, Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal argue that professionals need to develop a curious mindset to help them better anticipate and manage complicated and unforeseeable problems.

What it is

Todd Kashdan, senior scientist at George Mason University, identified four core attributes that make up a curious mindset:

Inquisitiveness. This trait involves exploring unfamiliar or thorny situations to uncover what is really going on. Inquisitiveness compels us to move beyond the status quo to ask, "Why is this done this way?" From an inquisitive stance, we also take on multiple perspectives.

Creativity. Creativity means challenging existing notions about the situation, cross-pollinating ideas, and devising new explanations. A creative approach to a lackluster recruitment pool could be learning how other companies find qualified candidates or considering what issues are suggested by the current results of recruiting efforts.

Openness. Practicing acceptance and nonjudgment of new ideas that emerge are ways to express openness. It helps us detect subtleties that others may not notice and leverage these to gain new insights. In turn, we become more adaptable, resist conventional solutions that don't fit, and create novel solutions that increase organizational flexibility and revenue.

Disruption tolerance. Tolerance to disruptive situations involves having the ability to accept unconventional and seemingly risky solutions that advance the organization. In situations where the issue, course of action, or both are unclear or ill-defined, we tend to reach for low-risk solutions—often at the cost of creativity and boldness. Instead, we need to cultivate the ability to stay with and even enjoy the tension that arises when taking risks and trying new things.

How it works

When curiosity is applied to VUCA conditions, several organizational benefits can result, according to management professors Nathan Bennett and G. James Lemoine:

• Volatility. Organizations develop agility and there is the opportunity for profitability.

• Uncertainty. Information and alternatives are the result, presenting an opening for improved decision making.

• Complexity. It gives way for process restructuring, often leading to enhanced efficiencies.

• Ambiguity. Intelligent experimentation rises, making way for innovation.

Guidelines

Talent development professionals can use four curiosity-based strategies to better manage VUCA conditions they encounter.

Practice openness to negotiate market volatility. Solicit and vet ideas, whatever their origin, inside or outside the organization and industry. Implement practices that support and use failure as learning opportunities for identifying new prospects.

Cultivate disruption tolerance to handle uncertainty. Deliberately evaluate the costs and benefits of the status quo compared with those of proposed alternatives. Resist conventional decision making that emphasizes minimal risk, low-cost solutions, which typically results in negative or no results. Ensure that there is sufficient time to try out and adjust new solutions.

Meet complexity with creativity. Create opportunities for employees to proactively search for and experiment with new ideas. During this exploratory time, people should examine their own ideas, find out what others are doing, and join in projects of interest. Provide training programs, events, and workshops that ignite a sense of play and nonconformist thinking. Design work content, goals, and rewards to value, support, and acknowledge creativity.

Address ambiguity with inquisitiveness. Relentlessly question the status quo and groupthink. Push beyond the habit of seeking only what is known to explore nonconventional or unfamiliar ideas. Continually reframe fixed assumptions, rigid beliefs, and habitual interpretations of an issue to better understand and effectively respond to the situation at hand.

Results

Several organizations have used curiosity to attain some of the benefits mentioned above.

For example, John Deere repurposed simulation software from its engineering group to devise a sophisticated forecasting process for projecting its internal supply of talent in key areas. The software's underlying algorithm projects retirement and resignation patterns, capability needs, and skills gaps up to five years forward based on historical data.

Adobe demonstrated a robust curious mindset when, in 2011, it was the first company to discontinue annual performance reviews, explaining that they were irrelevant to its manner of operating. The agile method the company used in engineering was brought into talent development, and a method of constant assessment, feedback, and frequent check-ins was born.

Meanwhile, Netflix challenged the status quo by eliminating the convention of a designated amount of vacation time for salaried employees, shifting to an informal vacation system.

Checklist: Are You Using a Curious Mindset?

• Are you making decisions largely based on preconceived assumptions or past experience? Defer or suspend judgment and instead probe and ask questions to ensure you have accurate information about the current reality of a situation.

• When you are experiencing a challenge, do you tend to go for the conventional solution or follow the status quo? Look outside your organization and industry to see how others have tackled a similar challenge to help you develop and trial a fresh approach.

• Do you support and make room for failure? Reframe failures into codified and applied learning that, in turn, fosters a safe environment for risk taking.

Resources

Harrison, S. 2012. "Organizing the Cat? Generative Aspects of Curiosity in Organizational Life." The Oxford Handbook of Positive Organizational Scholarship, edited by K.S. Cameron and G.M. Spreitzer, 110-124. New York: Oxford University Press.

Lauriola, M., J.A. Litman, P. Mussel, R. De Santis, H.M. Crowson, and R.R. Hoffman. 2015. "Epistemic Curiosity and Self-Regulation." Personality and Individual Differences (83): 202-207.

Mussel, P. 2013. "Introducing the Construct Curiosity for Predicting Job Performance." Journal of Organizational Behavior (34): 453-472.