Curiosity as a Core Value

Building Mission has been one of the most gratifying experiences of my career. A big part of that pride is the culture that we have created, which inspires our team to attack complex problems on behalf of our customers.

I'd wager that most people wouldn't describe AWS consulting and managed services as a creative endeavour, but it truly is. 

Amazon's pace of innovation is unmatched, with new services and features being announced every week. Our customers expect us to be experts on all things AWS, so it's critical that we not only keep ourselves abreast of AWS' constantly improving platform but also push ourselves to actively engage and embrace change.

This week, our fantastic Learning & Development team is hosting a leadership lab to dig into the traits and mindsets of great leaders. To support the discussion, one of our L&D team members asked our Senior Leadership Team to share our personal perspectives on the question: "what's one mindset you believe sets great leaders apart?" My answer? Curiosity.

How Curiosity Fuels Leadership

I still remember the incredible satisfaction of writing my first program. It made me feel like a wizard, casting spells in the form of software that bent a computer to my will. 

Absolutely intoxicating! 

Maintaining this feeling has been incredibly important for me in my career as a technologist. Riding the wave of relentless progress requires an internal commitment to remaining curious. Curiosity fuels me to actively pursue an understanding of new technologies, and the same is true of Mission's incredible team of engineers and consultants.

Early in my career, curiosity drove me to set up my first Linux server as a high-schooler, and now Linux is now an ever-present part of my life. I also invested heavily in learning many different programming languages. While I have never used Smalltalk in a professional capacity, learning the language has been hugely influential in how I think about software. When cloud computing was first emerging, I was an early adopter, embracing new ways of thinking about infrastructure.

Curiosity has also been an important part of my life outside of work, sending me down many rabbit holes that tickled my brain. When my daughter was younger, I built her a digital "music box" that let her play her favorite songs with the tap of an NFC card. It wasn't immediately obvious how this may impact my career, but it was gratifying to use technology to delight my kiddo.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

About twenty years ago, Steve Jobs delivered his legendary "Stay hungry, Stay foolish" commencement speech at Stanford. The entire speech is worth watching, but I want to call out one particularly instructive story about Steve's short-lived college experience.

    Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the

    country. Throughout the campus, every poster, every label on every drawer, was

    beautifully hand-calligraphed. Because I had dropped out, and didn’t have to take the

    normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned

    about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between

    different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was

    beautiful, historical, artistically subtle, in a way that science can’t capture. And I

    found it fascinating.

    None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years

    later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And

    we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If

    I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had

    multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the

    Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them.

I adore this story. It's an exemplar of curiosity's importance. Next time you encounter something that creates a little spark in your heart and mind, don't ignore it. Nurture it. Help it grow into a roaring bonfire, even if it's not immediately clear what the application will be for you professionally. 

Stay curious!