Why curiosity beats experience

But that experience has taught me one thing: experience is not nearly as valuable to me as staying curious.

I was reminded of this recently at a PROI Global Summit, where a session pushed me well outside my comfort zone and left me feeling pretty humbled by how much I still have to learn about approaching things with fresh eyes.

Experience can sometimes be a trap

The more you've seen, the easier it becomes to assume you've seen everything. Patterns emerge, shortcuts present themselves, and before you know it you're operating on autopilot and complacency has set in.

Think about that moment when a client presents a challenge and your brain immediately categorises it, 'Oh, this is like that situation from 2015.' Sometimes that's useful but it can also mean you miss what's actually different about ‘this challenge in this moment’.

The Pew Research Center found that 87% of workers acknowledge that ongoing skill development is essential for career success – fair enough, but that’s only half of it. Learning new skills is the obvious part, the harder part is staying hungry for it.

As humans most of us are naturally curious when we let ourselves be – we just need to tap into it. Serena Williams famously continuously studies and learns from her opponents, leading to the longest span as No. 1 in women’s tennis (nearly 15 years!). Barack Obama was known to spend an hour each day on personal reading even when he had the most demanding job in the world. These are highly successful people who sought inspiration, never stopped learning and were endlessly curious.

Communications has changed

In fact, more so in the past five years than the last 20! AI is rewriting the rules and audience behaviours are changing in ways we're still trying to understand.

That means experience can potentially be a liability if it makes you assume the old playbooks still work. I've seen plenty of senior comms professionals get wrong-footed because they trusted patterns that are no longer relevant in today’s 24/7, digital world.

LinkedIn's Workplace Learning Report found that employees who make time to learn are significantly more productive and less stressed. IMD Business School research shows that lifelong learners develop stronger emotional intelligence, adaptability and communication skills. These aren't nice-to-haves. In a rapidly changing world, they're essential for survival – and we need to make sure we’re developing that curiosity shown by the likes of Williams and Obama.

It’s not whether you can afford time to learn. It's whether you can afford not to!

Clearly, staying curious doesn’t mean we all have to start consuming endless content or chasing every trend. It's more to do with embracing a little bit of discomfort – asking questions that might seem basic and admitting when something is beyond your current understanding.

At that PROI session back in May, I was doing things that felt genuinely awkward and taking approaches that challenged my established ways of thinking. The discomfort was the point, really. Looking back at my career, the moments I learned most were rarely the comfortable ones.

I've started asking myself different questions. Not 'how have we always done this?' but 'why do we do it this way at all?' Not 'what do I already know about this?' but 'what might I be missing?'.

The organisations that thrive aren't necessarily the ones with the most resources or the longest track record but the ones where curiosity is valued and protected. They deliberately make space for exploration alongside execution. They reward people who ask good questions, not just those who have quick answers and they see gaps in knowledge as opportunities, not embarrassments.

Experience without curiosity becomes stale

I'm not suggesting experience doesn't matter because it absolutely does. The judgement that comes from navigating hundreds of client situations, the relationships built over years of consistent delivery. All of that has genuine value.

But I've realised that experience without curiosity is just too safe. It’s important to own and be proud of your experience but it’s just as important to know when to trust the patterns and when to question them. The best communicators I know are the ones who never stop being curious. They're students first, experts second. And they understand that the moment you think you've figured it all out is the moment you start falling behind.

I came back from that PROI Summit with my brain working overtime because I was reminded of how much there still is to explore, how many more uncomfortable experiences I can learn and grow from. And I can honestly say that after all my years in this industry, that feeling of excitement about what I don't yet know is what keeps this work interesting.