What I learn from my 4 year old

I have been trying to spend more time with Yuvan, my 4 year old son recently and have realized that there is so many things I can learn from him.



He is constantly striving to learn about new stuff. He naturally has the tendency to ask questions like What is this ? why is this like it is ? How does it work ? why does it work like this only ? and when I answer his question, he starts off with more questions on the answer that I give. At some point, I can not keep up and just tell him to stop or just divert his attention.



As we grow up, i think we loose this ability to question things around us and then stop learning. A lot of this is got to do with the schooling that we get. If we ask too many questions in school, the teachers get upset; The parents do not have time to answer these questions. Also, as we grow up we realize that answering questions is more fruitful than asking questions. This is when we loose the inclination to ask questions.



How important is this ability to ask simple questions ? I think what organizations lack is this abillity to constantly keep questioning about what they do and why they do it. This leads to complacency and silos creeping in the organization. This could be one of the biggest reason for resistance to change.



This leads to the questions :

How can we re-learn the ability to question ? What can we do so that it becomes ingrained in the DNA of our team or organization ? I will try and explore these questions in detail in the next blog in the series.



Love

Mukesh