Compliance or Curiosity?

You can hire the most curious 22-year-old in the country and have her acting compliant by month four. Your company did that to her. John Frehse spent a segment on CEO Daily Brief pointing at 3.1 million unfilled US manufacturing jobs and saying we've raised a generation of compliance kids who won't take them. He's right that we have a curiosity problem. I want to push on where it actually comes from. Curiosity gets trained out of people by the systems they work inside. ➡️ Six layers of approval for a $200 purchase teaches people not to ask. ➡️ A performance review that punishes mistakes teaches people not to try. ➡️ A boss who gets defensive when questioned teaches people not to question. None of this shows up in a pulse survey, but it's the experience your company is creating. Before you blame the schools or the phones or the generation, look at your own systems. What are they teaching your people to do?