Human vs. Machine
In an era where artificial intelligence (AI) can deliver answers in milliseconds, it may feel as if the value of human inquiry is fading. But according to innovation specialist and author of Question to Learn, Joe Lalley, the opposite is true.
Curiosity—real, active, five-year-old-level curiosity—is becoming one of the most important professional skills of our time. Lalley has spent his career helping organizations break through stagnation, reconnect with their users, and learn to ask better questions. Today, he believes that curiosity is the key to thriving in an AI-powered workplace.
Through his firm, Joe Lalley Experience Design, he has worked with clients across healthcare, technology, legal, manufacturing, and consulting. Though not directly embedded in the cleaning industry, Lalley said the underlying principles translate easily: Understanding how people use physical spaces, uncovering pain points, and uncovering behavioral patterns. “I think all of that applies,” he stated. And because the cleaning industry often engages with customers in tangible, real-world environments, he sees an advantage: “When it’s a physical experience, I feel like there’s this other big, really important data point that I think you all have.”
Why curiosity matters more in the age of AI
While past innovations helped people work faster or more accurately, Lalley believes AI introduces a different kind of risk—our willingness to outsource our thinking. “AI does a lot of things, but it has this potential to allow us to outsource our thinking, outsource our opinions, outsource our judgment, and even outsource our curiosity,” he said.
That doesn’t mean AI is the enemy. Instead, Lalley sees the potential for partnership. “I think the two can be paired really well,” he said. AI is extraordinary at analyzing patterns, retrieving information, and surfacing past examples. But it cannot build empathy. It cannot generate human understanding. It cannot decide which questions are worth asking.
“That’s human,” Lalley emphasized. “That’s human skill.”
Treating AI like a conversation partner
While many people treat AI tools like upgraded search engines, Lalley approaches them differently. He treats them almost like collaborators—engaging in conversation, refining prompts, and verifying what he learns. “I think you have to be really thoughtful and intentional about what you ask it to do,” he said.
AI has become particularly useful to him as a small business owner. Before meeting with potential clients, he gathers context much more quickly than he did in the past. “It allows me to research other organizations that I would potentially want to work with. I can do that so much faster and walk into a first meeting with more knowledge than I probably could in the past,” he said.
One especially unique application? He uses AI to handle his own customer service challenges. When navigating software problems or troubleshooting integrations, he has found the tool significantly more effective than wading through FAQs or basic chatbots. “I highly recommend it,” he said.
Helping organizations move from knowing to learning
A major theme in Lalley’s work is assisting senior leaders to reconnect with a learning mindset. Expertise is valuable—but it also comes with a trap. “You start to suffer from what I call the curse of knowledge,” he observed. “It’s hard for you to imagine what it’s like not to know something because you know it so well.”
That curse can quietly erode curiosity inside teams. People stop asking questions. They assume they already understand the customer. They forget what it was like to be new.
Lalley’s goal is to reverse that. He helps teams reconnect with the instinctive curiosity they had as children—when asking questions was natural, constant, and expected. “We used questions to go from not knowing to knowing,” he said. Reclaiming that mindset, he argues, opens the door to breakthroughs.
The role of design thinking and improv
Lalley’s approach blends two disciplines: Design thinking and improv. Design thinking teaches teams to start with empathy—observing customers directly, listening without judgment, and understanding real needs before jumping to solutions. This approach changed the way Lalley worked early in his career. “It really changed the way I thought about work,” he said.
Once a problem is understood, teams generate ideas broadly before evaluating them. This separation, Lalley mentioned, is crucial. Evaluating too early limits possibilities and suppresses creativity.
Improv, meanwhile, reinforces skills that organizations often overlook: Active listening, team support, adaptability, and responsiveness to real-time feedback. “Your focus is on how to make this really good for the audience. That is it,” Lalley said. “It’s not about me. It’s about them.”
For professionals, these lessons are transformative. Improv teaches presence. It teaches awareness. It teaches teams to build—and pivot—together.
How leaders can inspire curiosity
For organizations, fostering curiosity requires modeling it from the top. Lalley believes leaders must be willing to show vulnerability, especially by asking questions they don’t already know the answers to. “That simple act demonstrates to the group, okay, it’s all right to not know,” he said.
He also encourages leaders to rethink the weight they place on decisions. Too often, decision-making becomes a high-pressure event. Lalley suggests treating decisions as checkpoints instead of endpoints. “The more important thing is what you do after the decision,” he stated. New information may emerge tomorrow, and teams should be ready to pivot. Reducing the pressure makes it easier to experiment, learn, and stay curious.
Will curiosity be the differentiator in the future?
Lalley believes it absolutely can be—especially if organizations shift their mindset around AI. Instead of focusing solely on efficiency, he recommends framing AI as a tool for eliminating problems. He referenced a study in which one group of paralegals was told to use AI for efficiency, and another was told to use it to eliminate the work they hated. Usage skyrocketed in the latter group.
“Just that little thing can be a huge, huge breakthrough for teams,” he said.
Curiosity, paired with AI, becomes a force multiplier. It encourages exploration. It uncovers problems worth solving. It engages employees in meaningful ways.
In Lalley’s view, it may be the skill that sets thriving organizations apart from struggling ones in the future.
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