You

If your work related curiosity has vanished you are most likely bored at work. Needless to say, that’s not driving much positive energy.

There can be many reasons for lack of curiosity, and some of them stem from challenges at lower levels of the MeDrivers:

• Learning Mindset (“Do I fundamentally believe that I can learn anything I want to?”)
• Day to Day Motivation (“Am I strongly motivated in my work on a day-to-day basis?”) -
• Drive Factors (“Am I deeply personally motivated in my work?”)
• Adaptiveness (“Do I feel the freedom to play and experiment?”)

You can also build your work curiosity via different practices. Below are a few ideas:

Break routines

• Completing mindless routines week after week, year after year kills curiosity. Try to deliberately break routines, e.g.:
  • Do things in a different order
  • Work from different places/locations
  • Play with the formats you use (change templates, change presentation formats, do something differently…)

Challenge your thinking

• Set yourself a challenging task, e.g.:
  • Assume that what you do could be done in a smarter way, and challenge yourself to come up with at least 5 alternative approaches (be open and creative – none of the ideas has to be great)
  • Think of a person you admire at work, and think of ways that he/she might approach some of your work challenges differently

Ask others for ideas

• Simply ask a colleague you trust: “Do you have any ideas for things I could do differently for the benefit of our team?”

It’s a practical rule of thumb to set aside at least 30 minutes each month to question your way of doing things – and to check up on your own progress. To make it happen: Put it in your calendar for the coming 3 months and see how it works.

Your Team

Low levels of curiosity often comes from challenges on lower levels of TEAM-Drivers, so start by considering if any of the five drivers could be a challenge in your team:

• Trust (“Are we transparent and honest with one another?”)
• Healthy conflict (“Do we engage in constructive conflict when needed?”)
• Commitment (“Do we make clear decisions and execute according to plans?”)
• Accountability (“Do we challenge and provide feedback to one another?”)
• Shared results (“Do we focus on achieving collective results?”)

If you want to raise curiosity in your team, it can be an idea to base the discussion on your Shared results – what you collectively are trying to achieve.

Set aside a couple of hours to revisit your Shared results (“What are we trying to achieve and why?”) and ask everyone to challenge it, e.g.:

• What has changed around us since it was formulated?
• What have we learned since it was formulated?
• Can we measure it more exactly – directly or indirectly?
• How can we make it sharper?

Even if you don’t change the formal definition of your Shared results the discussion should raise the level of energy and curiosity. So round off this activity by discussing possible changes based on the discussions (break into themes/roles if relevant):

• What should we start doing?
• What should we do more?
• What should we do less?
• What should we stop doing?

There are other basic routines that can help maintain curiosity in the team. Below are a few ideas:

Break routines

• Change setting/timing/agendas for team meetings at least every 3 months
• Rotate how people are physically sitting from time to time

Challenge each other’s thinking

• Set up peer-to-peer reviews, where two peers take turns in the following exercise: -
  • Present what they are trying to achieve and why they have chosen the approach
  • Ask openly for feedback and ideas (with no obligation to change anything)

Ask others for ideas

• Simply ask one or more stakeholders: “Do you have any ideas for things we could do differently that would increase the value we deliver to you?”

You

Instead of spending too much time on perfecting a solution or concept before it hits the target audience, adaptive people find ways to test new ideas with their stakeholders early on.

The philosophy is to “fail fast” rather than to drag out the pain. Experience also shows that early feedback from real users/stakeholders will improve the solution in 9 out of 10 cases.

The pre-requisite for experimentation is some form of idea that you believe has potential. Good questions to ask yourself before spending too much effort on realizing your idea are:

• Who will benefit from this idea and how?
• What is the simplest possible form that will enable you to get feedback from expected beneficiaries?

Most ideas can be tested based on storytelling. Simply explain:

• What challenge you are trying to solve for who?
• How you will do it?
• What result you anticipate.

Then ask openly for feedback and remember that it’s most valuable to ask potential benefactors this question.

If your solution/concept passes the storytelling test you can gradually refine your experimentation. Here are some common formats:

Use cases

• Explain your solution via short stories where you introduce different people and explain how they would experience the solution/concept
• Go through the different steps that people will experience, and explain where the new solution/concept differs from the way things happens

Prototypes

• Prototypes covers a range of engagement techniques from primitive sketches illustrating how a concept/solution will look, up to a fully working prototype that looks exactly like the final solution
• The base advice is to start with the simplest meaningful version first and then refine it, based on feedback

The most important rule of experimentation is to not fall too much in love with your solution/concept too early. Most great ideas goes through several iterations – and are often dumped and rethought – before a useful version hits the target audiences.

And remember: Feedback is a gift! - Only if you remain open minded will you be able to benefit from all the feedback you will receive underway, and that can make your idea truly great.

Your Team

A team can be more or less experimenting, and it’s a team habit that can be nurtured.

The first pre-requisite for experimentation is to secure a culture that’s open to learning from failure. If the team ridicules mistakes, or avoids even talking about failure, no-one will take the risk of experimenting.

If this is a challenge in your team, maybe have a look at the more foundational TEAM-Drivers (especially “Accountability” might be of interest):

• Trust (“Are we transparent and honest with one another?”)
• Healthy conflict (“Do we engage in constructive conflict when needed?”)
• Commitment (“Do we make clear decisions and execute according to plans?”)
• Accountability (“Do we challenge and provide feedback to one another?”)
• Shared results (“Do we focus on achieving collective results?”)

If you want to practice experimentation in your team simply try it out. It can be as simple as follows:

• Call for a brainstorm on a specific challenge (this can be anything, but look for challenges that everyone perceive as a problem, and where it would have obvious benefits to solve it)
• Start by “challenging the challenge”
  • Assume that the defined challenge is only a symptom of underlying root causes. Brainstorm about possible root causes.
• Generate ideas that can address each of the identified root causes (if you are many in the team, split this work up in sub-teams and share ideas in plenary)
• If relevant, pick one or two of the generated ideas and decide how/who will take on refining and experimenting with them

The most important rule for this process is to be open and to build positively on each other’s ideas. At the end of the exercise only one or two ideas will survive – but in the brainstorming phases the most important learning for everyone is that experimenting is fun, and that it’s OK to also discuss wild ideas.

You

When you feel real comfortable around people you like and respect, laughter and playfulness comes naturally. When this is achieved in teams at work, research has proven that this is a solid predictor of both high adaptiveness and high performance.

Do not mistake cracking jokes for having fun. Fun and playfulness must be linked to the work you are doing and accompanied by a feeling of connection, bonding and psychological safety to be effective.

There can be several deeper reasons for lack of fun and playfulness, so maybe start by reviewing some of the lower levels of the MeDrivers:

• Learning Mindset (“Do I fundamentally believe that I can learn anything I want to?”)
• Day to Day Motivation (“Am I strongly motivated in my work on a day-to-day basis?”)
• Drive Factors (“Am I deeply personally motivated in my work?”)
• Adaptiveness (“Do I feel the freedom to play and experiment?”)

Your team

If fun and playfulness does not come naturally in your team, start by reviewing some of the possible root causes in the lower levels TEAM-Drivers:

• Trust (“Are we transparent and honest with one another?”)
• Healthy conflict (“Do we engage in constructive conflict when needed?”)
• Commitment (“Do we make clear decisions and execute according to plans?”)
• Accountability (“Do we challenge and provide feedback to one another?”)
• Shared results (“Do we focus on achieving collective results?”)

If your team is performing well on all the TEAM-Drivers and you still need a helping hand to enjoy more fun and playfulness, maybe simply set aside time for this by arranging social events where you play and have fun together. Odds are, that doing fun stuff together outside of work will also increase your fun at work.

You can also try to create more room for fun and playfulness. Instead of rushing through all formal tasks at record speed in team meetings, maybe try to add more slack into the agenda, and make room for improvisation and odd ideas.

If the foundational elements are in place, human nature does not need much space before we naturally starts laughing, bonding and having fun.

You

If you are not allowed to make mistakes this will kill curiosity, experimentation and fun.

But even in risk-averse cultures you can experiment and try out new ideas. Only, you will need to be extra careful in building your case for implementing a new idea.

The foundation for evaluating an idea is, as always: Who will benefit from this idea and how?

The key to getting an idea approved is to identify “projected benefits” that clearly surpass “calculated risks”. If this equation can be made attractive enough, you can often move your ideas forward.

To overcome the natural skepticism in a risk-averse culture it’s good practice to define the different risks and negative scenarios, instead of leaving this to others. This will help you focus the attention on the potential gains, and have an open discussion about risks.

For “projected benefits”, work with different scenarios, e.g. “Best case”, “Projected case” and “Worst case”. If possible, add probabilities to the different scenarios.

For “calculated risks” do not hold back: Make a long list of all imaginable risks. But present it sorted, using the following logic:

• What’s the probability of this risk to occur (%)
• What’s the consequence if the risks occur (cash value)

For each risk, multiply probability (%) with consequence (cash value), and rank after highest amount. This will help you focus discussions on the real risks.

By the way: Even in less risk averse environments using the approach suggested above can be a very valuable exercise!

Your team

If your team is overly risk averse, maybe review some of the possible root causes in the lower levels TEAM-Drivers:

• Trust (“Are we transparent and honest with one another?”)
• Healthy conflict (“Do we engage in constructive conflict when needed?”)
• Commitment (“Do we make clear decisions and execute according to plans?”)
• Accountability (“Do we challenge and provide feedback to one another?”)
• Shared results (“Do we focus on achieving collective results?”)

If your team is performing well on all these TEAM-Drivers and you still want to nurture a more risk tolerant team culture, there are a few routes you can take:

“Lessons learned” sessions

• Any team makes mistakes, but risk averse often avoids talking about them. Therefore, just opening up for discussions on failures and learnings will help open up the dialogue
• Focus on forward thinking learnings and what we will do different next time/in similar situations
• Avoid any form of individual blame or going into “who did this and said what”

Demonstrate “Calculated risks thinking”:

• Work with “calculated risk thinking” (described in previous section) for an upcoming project and take time to explain the thinking behind
• This will move “making mistakes” from being something to feel guilty about into something we can discuss, work with, and become increasingly better at predicting