By seeking out people from other industries and communities from the ones we usually reside in, and doing so with curiosity and genuine interest for learning about the skill and the personality that it takes to perform in those worlds, we can open our eyes to other realities and ways to see the world.
This can be extremely powerful. For example, a doctor should not only be able to look at the world through the eyes of their patient, but also be willing to adapt and step outside of their comfortable point of view in order to keep up with and benefit from the advances in the field. “The very best doctors, detectives, generals, coaches, and diplomats all share the skill of being able to think about the world from the perspective of their rivals.” They do this by anticipating what is going to happen, instead of blindly developing strategies, and this is achieved by first disrupting their own point of view. Similarly, great products anticipate how we’ll want to use them or what we’ll want to do with them. With these products, the engineer behind them had to ask the questions: Who is going to use this product? What’s going to be happening while they are using it? How is that person different from me? Each of those questions requires adopting a different point of view.
Not everybody appreciated being the target of curiosity, and that too is a way of seeing the world from someone else’s point of view.
Seeking out people from other industries and communities doesn’t just disrupt your point of view—it also strategically positions you in the network. By maintaining connections across different fields and communities through Curiosity Conversations, you create Network Shortcuts that give you access to information and opportunities that would never reach you through your immediate circle. The best professionals who can think from their rivals’ perspectives have often built networks that expose them to these diverse viewpoints.