A question for you…What connects businesses like Google, Nike, Dell, Disney, McKinsey & Co and Accenture amongst others?
The answer is that the trait of ‘curiosity’ sits either as part of their corporate values or is a desired competency within their recruitment processes.
Within the world of sales training, we’re regularly told that Opportunity Identification/ Discovery/Needs Analysis (add any other similar term your own business uses) are an important part of any self-respecting sales process – and they are. Indeed, developing the skills and behaviors to execute effectively in these areas have long been recognized as an important feature of the high performing sales organization.
Mindset v Skillset
What’s becoming increasingly clear though is that whilst possessing the skillset is important, having the right mindset as a pre-cursor to using those skills is equally important.
Earlier this year we were approached by a potential client who shared with us one of their pain points. They explained they have a team of engineers who spend weeks at a time overseeing the installation and implementation of their products and services at client sites internationally. Post-installation those same engineers pay regular visits to the client to monitor product and service performance. ‘Don’t get me wrong’, their President told us ‘Our teams do a great job of managing the implementation and monitoring programs. The customer feedback we receive is very strong. What I’m realizing though is that for the time they’re on site those engineers are not simply implementors, they’re also our eyes and ears on the ground. So whilst they’re great at delivering what they’re tasked to deliver, what we’re not hearing from them is ‘I had a conversation with X and they mentioned Y. Is that something we could help them with?’ Or ‘I’ve noticed the customer is still using this outdated equipment or that old process. Could that be an opportunity for us?’ I’m wondering how much more customer value we could create if we demonstrated more curiosity.’
These stories got me thinking about how many other businesses must be missing opportunities to create further client value, either because their business development approach ends the moment a deal is signed – or because those responsible for implementing or delivering the solution, in this case the engineers, just don’t have identifying opportunities on their radar.
As we’ll discuss shortly, it’s one thing recognizing the benefits of demonstrating curiosity, but it’s another thing entirely creating a culture and individual mindset where displaying that same curiosity become a fundamental part of day-to-day behavior.
The real-life example above helps bring to life the potential benefits of displaying, or in this case the missed opportunities of not displaying, a mindset of curiosity during customer interaction.
External AND Internal
And by the way, the benefits of demonstrating curiosity are not confined solely to the world of sales, business development or customer facing interaction. The same principles can equally be applied within our own organizations. How often do we blindly accept information or data that’s generated or supplied internally? How often do we accept at face value that which others within our own business share?
On digging deeper with the same client as part of our Discovery process, they shared a story of how a report they’d been working on was very nearly published to the market containing a series of gaping holes and missing data. It was only when the report was reviewed pre-publication by a senior leader that the leader questioned the information that sat within and why certain data had been excluded.
The report had been created by a small team of people. On further analysis, what became clear was that as the report passed through each set of hands, gaps and omissions had indeed been spotted. Interestingly though, these issues weren’t raised – either because there was an assumption there must be a reason why the relevant information hadn’t been included, or because as the previous reviewer hadn’t raised any issues the belief was that the omissions weren’t serious enough to warrant flagging. A relatively senior leader who had been part of the review team then held their hands up and admitted that in reviewing the report they had only looked at certain sections…
Now, there’s a whole bunch of forensic analysis we could complete here about company culture, psychological safety and the extent to which team members feel comfortable openly questioning those more senior to them – whatever the case, this is a great example of the potential risks of not questioning, not challenging, not looking to probe or interrogate the information or data that we are provided with – a situation which could easily have resulted in reputational damage had the report been published to the market.
So this mindset of curiosity piece – looking to understand better, asking more questions, paying attention, noticing ‘stuff’, questioning or challenging appropriately can reap significant benefits as part of both customer facing and internal interaction.
As mentioned though, saying to somebody ‘Ask more questions’ or ‘Be more observant’ is easy, the big challenge lies in the series of barriers that render adopting a mindset of curiosity more difficult than we may anticipate…
Barriers To Adopting a ‘Mindset of Curiosity’
Whilst there are a multitude of reasons why adopting a mindset of curiosity can be far tougher than it sounds, we’ll begin with three of the most common:
- The Education System
It’s not that long ago that education systems in most developed countries followed the ‘Don’t question, just follow the teacher’s directions’ approach. Certainly, those of us of a Gen X and Gen Y vintage were schooled in an education system which probably didn’t stray too far from the ‘Shut up and listen’ learning method and where questioning the teacher was viewed as a sign of trouble making or insolence. For anyone bold enough to challenge the status quo, punishment would often follow. No wonder then that students fast learned to say nothing rather than risk the negative consequences of placing their head above the parapet. Fortunately, schooling has evolved for Gen Z and the Alpha Generation witnessed today by a more interactive, collaborative approach to learning. Nonetheless, the scars of Gen X and Y and the legacy of ‘keep your head down and don’t question’ still pervades the modern-day workplace.
- Personality Style
The worlds of psychometric and personality profiling have their supporters and critics in equal measure. If though you place any merit in the thinking of psychologist Carl Jung – around whose work many of the modern-day personality profiling tools find their roots, you’ll recognise a range of characteristics that distinguish individuals from one another.
One of those characteristics is the preference either to be naturally accepting of that which is shared by others versus the preference to naturally question or challenge that same information. On the basis that for many of us ‘acceptance’ is the natural approach, by definition it will take a more conscious, concerted effort to adopt a mindset of curiosity.
- The Human Brain
I’m no professor of neuroscience, (who’d have guessed!?!) but if you’re familiar with the work of Nobel prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman you may have come across the concept of System 1 and System 2 Thinking.
System 1 and System 2 is Kahneman’s straightforward way of explaining cognitive processes in the brain. System 1 Thinking is fast, automatic and driven by instinct and experience. It requires no conscious thought. An example here would be how your brain manages to ensure you avoid bumping into other pedestrians when walking along a busy, fast moving shopping street. You don’t consciously think ‘slow down…take a step to the left…turn my shoulder to the right to squeeze through that gap’. You just do it! It’s sub-conscious. System 2 on the other hand is the opposite – it’s slower, more deliberate, conscious and logical. If you’ve ever hired a car in a country where they drive on the opposite side of the road to your own region, then initially at least you’ll be engaging System 2 Thinking to navigate the roads safely. You’re very conscious of what you’re doing and extremely deliberate in how you do it.
So how does all this relate to our mindset of curiosity? In our day-to-day working roles, many of operate on auto-pilot – particularly if the activities we complete are those in which we have built up a bank of experience. As a result, we spend most of our time operating from System 1 Thinking, from a state of sub-consciousness – without taking a step back to deliberately question processes, systems, our own approach or the information we’re working with. The mindset of curiosity demands System 2 Thinking. It requires us to consciously step back and to notice things that perhaps hadn’t been on our radar before.
Already we can begin to see why adopting a mindset of curiosity can be far more difficult than it sounds.
The Solution
In collaboration with our international client we developed a two-day workshop, to begin embedding a mindset of curiosity across their teams and to develop the skills and decision making processes that help overcome the barriers mentioned here.
If you would like to find out more about this program or to discuss how the mindset of curiosity could help drive your business performance and results please get in touch.