“Stay curious” is a core value often adopted by companies to spur innovation and creativity.
It’s also a practice that can lead to better performance, a less stressful work environment, and bumps in collaboration and employee engagement, according to The Harvard Business Review.
But curiosity doesn’t always come naturally. Sometimes, leaders have to instill practices and exercises to keep the inquiring spirit alive.
Take Alley Wilcox, for example.
The Director of Global Quality Control for FareHarbor, an online booking platform for tours and recreational activities, introduced a program tailored to encourage exploration.
Called “Variable Time,” the monthly four-hour block allows quality control engineers to gain a new skill, shadow a team member from another department or pursue an interest they want to learn more about.
Meanwhile, Snapdocs executive Vishal Rana implemented a change in perspective to help feed curiosity.
“One of the most important ways I’ve pushed people to be more curious and expansive in their roles is to define their teams and missions not as org structures or activities, but as problems you solve or customer outcomes you create,” said Rana, who serves as VP of customer success and operations for the digital mortgage closings platform.
To learn how these initiatives have helped, Built In Colorado connected with Rana and Wilcox.
How do you create a culture of curiosity?
In changing how we define our roles, we’ve given our teams wider latitude to do things outside of their job description and deliver the outcome as opposed to doing the assigned tasks. For example, in a software company context, support exists to reduce the impact of unexpected behavior — not answer tickets. An implementation manager’s goal is to reduce time to value and not manage projects.
We also empower teams to ask questions by providing context and making it safe and rewarding to ask hard questions. The practical way to do this is to share an uncomfortable amount of business information. We do this in our all-hands meetings, and we publicly praise those who ask hard questions. This leads to a team that feels trusted. Another practical application is to constantly teach and reward your teams for teaching each other about your clients’ businesses. If they feel knowledgeable, they’ll push a customer. If they’re afraid to look silly, they’ll stay quiet.
Constantly teach and reward your teams for teaching each other about your clients’ businesses.”
How has this approach shown up in practice?
We experience very little customer churn, but one of our team members became curious about the churn we have had and started digging into the reasons behind it. He found that the key metrics we track with customers do not always uncover churn risk. In going back through meeting notes and talking to other customer success managers and folks on other customer-facing teams we found that we did have more gut-driven indicators, or small signs that our user ops and other teams occasionally sensed. Because this intuition was not based on data, these folks often did not feel confident in raising an alarm bell.
We have since enhanced our approach and have instituted a company-wide Andon system. Any customer-facing employee can pull the figurative Andon cord and share their concerns so that the customer success team can dig in with the customer to understand our true risk. So far, this has proven to be effective at lowering churn even further. It also has the effect of creating a virtuous cycle of curiosity.
How do you inspire curiosity in your team ?
I attribute much of my professional growth to people at FareHarbor who have coached me through my own curiosity. I’m rather introverted. The team here invested in our relationship so that I was comfortable asking questions.
After growing with FareHarbor for six years, I have made it a priority to invest in those around me with utmost intentionality to build a safe, honest, professional relationship in which they can bring their curiosity to me. I’ve made myself available and responsive to my team via Slack, email and calls. I make sure to ask questions — even when it’s about the way it’s always been done — ask for help without trepidation and hold myself accountable for displaying curiosity with my actions.
How has this culture of curiosity shown up in practice?
It is in our job description in quality control to ask questions, ask again, find the root opportunity and make it better. The team takes that responsibility to heart; it is our culture.
One time, an associate asked if they could shadow another team member to help address a question they had. For months, we worked together through discussion, challenges and changes, all of which led to a new continued education program called “Variable Time.” This program gives each associate four hours every month to dedicate to their own curiosity, whether that’s shadowing another employee or department or taking an online course to gain a new skill. Variable Time reflects our team’s culture of curiosity, and I’m grateful to have played a role in its creation.
