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The WONDER of it All

Writer's picture: Ajarn Mark CaldwellAjarn Mark Caldwell

Updated: Mar 11, 2024



AI-generated image of a professional man in an office, looking thoughtful, staring out the window.

"Daydreamer!".  "Just sits there and never gets anything done."  "Gets paid for staring out the windows!"


The Genius of Wonder is often misunderstood, even by the people who have it themselves. Perhaps this is because it is one of the least visible geniuses, but this makes it no less valuable!


As the first step in any project, the person with Wonder is helping solve the question of what are we trying to accomplish. This may sound crazy, but you’d be surprised how many businesses are started with Invention, and forget to come back to the first step and figure out what problem they are trying to solve.

The Genius of Wonder is often misunderstood, even by the people who have it themselves.

You love to cook, so you decide to open a restaurant, but fail to define what will make people come to your restaurant instead of the thousands of others out there.


You love to program, so you create a new web application that is a to-do list, plus an event calendar, with a chat tool, and it all allows for massive personalization of colors, fonts and graphics! But when someone asks you what it’s for…


An Inventor loves to create new things, but unless they are responding to the prompting of a Wonderer, the invention often goes unused, may have many disconnected parts, and fails to live up to its potential or the potential of the Inventor.

The person with the Genius of Wonder tends to ask open-ended questions that prompt more thought and discussion.

The person with the Genius of Wonder tends to ask open-ended questions that prompt more thought and discussion. This is in contrast to the person with Tenacity who tends to ask questions in search of clarity around work to be done.


The Wonderer may ask big questions like, “What is missing from the market right now?”, “Why isn’t this product selling?”, or “How could we make the customer experience even better?”


Wonderers are often quiet and may seem lost in thought, which some people mistake for being detached or disinterested. But if you ask about what’s on their mind, you’ll find that there is a whole lot going on in there.


We refer to this as the 30,000-foot view. However, you usually can’t spend all your time doing big-picture brainstorming, so what is a Wonderer to do the rest of the time?


The Genius of Wonder can also be applied in a micro-environment. For example, on a factory assembly line, which to many shouts TENACITY, a person with Wonder may be thinking, “How could we make this process even more efficient?” It is still a form of big-picture or systems thinking, even in the context of a narrow workflow.


Image depicting the Crave and Crushed By of the Genius of Wonder

One sign that you are working with a person with the Genius of Wonder is that they crave consideration of their questions and are crushed by disinterest or a "Who cares?" response.


The Genius of Wonder is often overlooked, but until you know what you’re trying to do, all the rest of the Geniuses are unfocused and haphazard. They might accomplish something, but will it be useful?


Wonder is the critical first step!

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