An essential trait for business

from Joyce Lasecke, President

on March 10, 2010

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Earlier this week, I attended a presentation by Robert Stephens, founder of the Geek Squad.  He was speaking to the Minnesota Chapter of the Entrepreneurs Organization. I was excited to hear him because I’d also heard him on Minnesota Public Radio a couple of weeks ago, and one of his comments really stuck with me--essentially that curiosity is increasingly more important than expertise in many jobs. 
Over the 20 years that I’ve been interviewing people for possible employment at Fredrickson, I’ve always listened for evidence of curiosity.  That tells me two things:  that the person is likely a life-long learner and that he or she is resourceful and will readily look up information at the time of need. 
Stephens’ point about curiosity is timely as we watch many corporate learning organizations shift from a focus on “push” methods such as courses to “pull” methods such as wikis. Being curious and resourceful will help people use these self-service tools effectively.  And having curious and resourceful people in a company will be essential to that company’s ability to build and benefit from an enterprise social network.
See www.robertstephens.com for more on what he presented to EO Minnesota and on MPR.

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