Why It's Time To Channel Your Inner 5-Year-Old
Serial entrepreneur Jeff Hoffman says we must keep asking why, why, why?
Do you remember what it was like to be 5? When much of the world was still a mystery, both baffling and fascinating, and you couldn't stop asking questions. Why, why and, again, why? Frustrating the wits out of parents and other adults trying to get on with their day-to-day lives? Well I’ve just been reminded of how important it is for those driving deep—indeed systemic—change to reanimate and channel that state of mind.
One key privilege of travelling to different parts of the world to speak and advise is that you constantly find yourself outside your comfort zone. Meeting people from parallel realities—even cross-cutting realities—who spark very different lines of thought. If you are both lucky and curious, you soon find yourself hopping from learning curve to learning curve—and zooming up at least some of them.
All of which was coursing through my brain as I spoke at three different events at South Summit Brazil in Porto Alegre last week. For a visual sense of what the event was like, with over 23,000 delegates—yes—coursing through the extraordinary venue alongside Lake Guaíba, here’s short video compilation.
It was glorious to spend a little time with founder María Benjumea alongside the lake. South Summit is a leader in an evolving pack of summit series, several of which I’m also involved in, among them the Blue Earth Summit, where I’m on their so-called Council of Wisdom, and the ESG Summit series.
The temperatures in Porto Alegre were fairly warm, ranging up to 35 degrees, broken during my first night in the city by an intense tropical storm—which I watched from the windows of my lakeside hotel. The palms were bending right over as great curtains of rain staggered through. Several people I met the following day explained that climate change had been shifting regional weather patterns for some time.
The first session I did proved to be to a capacity audience in the main arena, where my theme was: “Reinventing Innovation.” I was told later there were over 2,000 people in the room, but it felt a lot more intimate than that. Played onto stage by a small band, I gave our compère a hug before starting, she sporting a shock of blue hair and extensive upper body tattoos.
Then, later, but again on the same stage, I did a fireside chat on the biodiversity agenda for business with the wonderful Lara Birkes (see below). Afterwards, a number of people commented on how well we seemed to get on, riffing off one another—and certainly I enjoyed the conversation immensely. We had first met the previous evening, outside a welcome reception, sitting on a park bench and watching out for bats overhead.
Indeed, the fireside chat went so well that Chris Locke of South Summit encouraged us to repeat the format the next morning when I was due to speak to some 20 business leaders in a private session at the American Chamber of Commerce. Turned out to be more like 40-50—and led to an extremely lively discussion, and to a wide range of follow-on conversations. Great fun.
The previous evening, at the end of my first full day, I had attended a dinner hosted by the extraordinary Gilberto Schwartsmann, an oncologist and, it turned out, many other things beside. Because I arrived early, Gilberto gave me a guided tour of part of his stunning art and book collections.
Then the other guests began to arrive, among whom was Jeff Hoffman, founder of Booking.com and Priceline.com. Because I enjoyed our conversation so much, I made sure to be in the audience for his closing speech—in which one key theme was that we all need to think like 5-year-olds, constantly asking why. He explained how his daughter’s constant demands to know how glass is made, for example, had led him to visit the high-tech glassmaker Corning—and to a range of in sights he would otherwise have missed.
Jeff also argued that, at least once a year, we need to take a blank sheet of paper to whatever we are doing and think about how we would do it differently if we were starting out from scratch. That’s what I did in the early days of Volans—and now, within the Volans format, I am attempting the same trick again in this, my fiftieth year of professional engagement in the world of change.