A Bias of Focused Curiosity

As an asset protection practitioner, have you ever tried to attend a conference or seminar on organizational psychology? It is likely that most will say, “no”.

You know how we all follow each other on LinkedIn? Through algorithms, services like this one identify patterns of our interests and saturate our feeds with “relevant” stuff. LinkedIn people think they’re doing us all a favor by curating our information feed, whereas the service is actually narrowing the spectrum of topics we’re viewing, thus preventing us from diversified learning. For example, if you check how your feed on LinkedIn is organized, you will see that content there shows what LinkedIn considers “top” based on relevance. So, if you simply change the setting to sort by “recent”, the diversity of information will increase. That default “top” setting is not cool!

Generally, in our careers we’re also very susceptible to focusing on professionally relevant content. Sadly, our brains are wired just like LinkedIn. We subscribe to relevant information feeds, attend relevant professional conferences and other events. We share our opinions on relevant topics. So, for example, the agenda and content of any professional conference should be quite predictable because it all relates to our specific professional responsibilities, tasks, objectives, and industry trends. So while the knowledge exchanged may be useful, it fits within narrow parameters of our industry and does not have a healthy blend of information from other fields. This is what I call a Bias of Focused Curiosity.

Back to organizational psychology.

Adam Grant is probably one of the more popular people in this field. Things he brings to the fore through his various public channels (talks, books, interviews, media feeds, etc.) help understand how humans view and behave in their workplaces. Would you say this is relevant to asset protection? You bet! Know of any asset protection conference where Adam Grant spoke recently? I did a quick search online. My eyes widened for a few seconds. There was the “RSA” conference!!! My initial excitement quickly dissipated because this “RSA” stands for The Royal Society for encouragement of the Arts. Nothing came up for recent asset protection events. NOTHING!

This is quite sad because people like Adam Grant, Simon Sinek, Steven Pinker, Frances Frei, Amy Cuddy, Sam Harris, Malcom Gladwell, Jordan Peterson, Daniel Dennett, Atul Gawande, Daniel Kahneman, Daniel Levitin, Heath brothers, and countless others represent just a sliver of a wide spectrum knowledge without which meaningful innovation and progress in any professional discipline is impossible.

So how does one avoid this bias?

Here’s what you should consider:

1. Identify the most important global thinkers in sciences, humanities, tech, politics, sports, and culture.
2. At least once a month, learn new content from each of these thinkers as well as relevant communities and organizations. Today, most of this content is on YouTube — no lengthy “scavenger hunt” required!
3. Based on new content in subject areas above, think about how it relates to your area of expertise and various applications. Keep active notes digitally.
4. Discuss your findings in professional circles at least weekly. This will help with information retention as well as active exchange of innovative ideas with your peers.
5. Write articles about ways in which wide spectrum concepts could be applied in your industry.
6. Help young and aspiring professionals understand the importance of wide spectrum knowledge and learn how to continually acquire it.
7. Repeat step 1 at least annually.

Thank you for your attention!

Soar above mediocrity!

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