Sep 8, 2026 · 54 min · 11 segments
Nearly everyone believes they're curious, yet far fewer feel empowered to ask questions, challenge assumptions, or explore new ideas at work. In this episode, Katie Miserany, Chief Communications…
Katie MiseranyGuestHui ChenHost
Zach CosegliaHost
Yeah, and we had this definition in the report of curiosity capacity, which I just referred to.
It's the practiced ability to stay open, ask sharper questions and keep learning alongside AI.
And I think if you think about where all innovation and all problem solving is born, if you don't have that practiced ability to stay open and ask sharper questions, and then, you know, the AI question aside, that's just this thing that's accelerating all the bad behaviors that we have inside of organizations.
How can you ever come up with a fresh idea or a new concept? And so I think in this age when all workers used to be measured on the output of what they did.
The things that you're creating are kind of the benchmark for how valuable you are to the organization.
Now, Claude can make me a slide deck that on the surface of it seems pretty good, pretty fast.
So where does the value move in the knowledge worker chain? And it's really about the inputs more than the outputs.
And as we think about curiosity, it's one of those core moments when you either decide to seek more inputs or you don't.
And that's where we think about competitive advantage being formed in this mode.
And again, part of the reason that we wanted to do this study is as we were talking to our customers or our peers or at conferences, this word was everywhere.
But now it's getting more formal or entrenched inside of organizations that are trying to move fast and do something different.
Is there anything that has surprised SurveyMonkey about the link between curiosity, capacity, and organizational performance?
When we first started out with this study, we had this hypothesis that we were like, we're going to find that curiosity is dead.
And frankly, what surprised us was that headline that just everybody's like, no, I am curious, but there are things getting in the way of expressing that curiosity.
Yeah, and we had this definition in the report of curiosity capacity, which I just referred to.
It's the practiced ability to stay open, ask sharper questions and keep learning alongside AI.
And I think if you think about where all innovation and all problem solving is born, if you don't have that practiced ability to stay open and ask sharper questions, and then, you know, the AI question aside, that's just this thing that's accelerating all the bad behaviors that we have inside of organizations.
How can you ever come up with a fresh idea or a new concept? And so I think in this age when all workers used to be measured on the output of what they did.
The things that you're creating are kind of the benchmark for how valuable you are to the organization.
Now, Claude can make me a slide deck that on the surface of it seems pretty good, pretty fast.
So where does the value move in the knowledge worker chain? And it's really about the inputs more than the outputs.
And as we think about curiosity, it's one of those core moments when you either decide to seek more inputs or you don't.
And that's where we think about competitive advantage being formed in this mode.
And again, part of the reason that we wanted to do this study is as we were talking to our customers or our peers or at conferences, this word was everywhere.
But now it's getting more formal or entrenched inside of organizations that are trying to move fast and do something different.
Is there anything that has surprised SurveyMonkey about the link between curiosity, capacity, and organizational performance?
When we first started out with this study, we had this hypothesis that we were like, we're going to find that curiosity is dead.
And frankly, what surprised us was that headline that just everybody's like, no, I am curious, but there are things getting in the way of expressing that curiosity.
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