A Curious Mind

Everyone has heard the saying “knowledge is power.” We all know that knowledge is essential, but what’s the best way to acquire it?

The secret to gaining knowledge is curiosity – the more curious you are, the more information you'll collect. By collecting more information, you’ll be better equipped to react to changing situations, since you'll be able to consider more options. Better still, you might even be able to anticipate changes before they happen.

Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, understood the central importance of curiosity. He held regular meetings with his top 500 managers every Saturday morning. Each time, he'd ask what they'd seen when visiting Walmart's competitors. He was curious to know every detail about his rivals, in case they had any interesting new ideas.

The knowledge he gained from these meetings allowed him to optimize his stores; Walmart has fairly comfortably held onto its position as the market leader.

Collecting information like this is always important. You never know when you'll need any given piece of information, but you'll be glad to have it when the time comes around.

A good strategy one of the authors uses for obtaining more knowledge is to have curiosity conversations, and he's had many of them over the past few decades. Curiosity conversations don't have a specific purpose, but they've often served him in unexpected ways.

For example, in 1992, he had a conversation with Daryl Gates, the chief of the LAPD at the time, who was notorious for his autocratic style of leadership. He didn't think much about the conversation at the time, but when he was working on a film about J. Edgar Hoover, the first director of the FBI, a few years later, he thought about Daryl Gates; their conversation had given him an insight into the thoughts and behavior of people in powerful positions, and he used Gates as an inspiration.