It’s easy for a startup to preach the importance of curiosity as they have nothing but questions about product-market fit, which technologies to use and what business models to adopt. Once a company answers these questions and finds success, the challenge becomes doing what works faster and at scale. This can sideline curiosity as the focus shifts from asking questions and experimentation to processes and execution.
Success and curiosity are not mutually exclusive concepts, though. Companies can have both provided that leadership recognizes the value of staying curious and creates an environment that cultivates curiosity. For example, marketing firm Known has worked with some of the biggest names in tech, including Meta, TikTok and Spotify. Consulting is a big part of its work and comes with the pressure to perform as experts. Despite this, Agnish Chakravarti, a partner and VP, said leadership encourages employees to express curiosity in their client work.
“Our managers model inquisitiveness by always asking ‘why’ and ‘what if’ questions, even in front of the clients we are trying to impress or senior leaders of the company,” Chakravarti said. “Through this we show that this is a natural and integral part of developing breakthrough ideas.”
Continue reading to learn how curiosity is crucial to Known’s work, along with how a software engineering manager at Squarespace uses trust to encourage his team to stay curious.
Squarespace offers tools for building a website or e-commerce business in addition to marketing solutions for email and social media.
How have you created a culture of curiosity on your team? And how do you model this mindset as a leader?
I am fortunate to be at an organization filled with curious individuals, and my role is to continue to hire curious people, encourage everyone’s individual curiosity and create opportunities to spark curiosity. One of the ways I have attempted to build on this culture is to demonstrate trust in my team. I am transparent about business, product and technical goals. I give my team space to ask questions, give feedback and collaborate on solutions. Then I make an informed decision influenced by their feedback.
Finally, communicating the impact and results of what we tried is imperative. I give all the credit to the team when things go well and focus on the learnings when things go poorly. As the manager, I am the one accountable for the final decision, regardless of the outcome. Over time this has built trust within the team, making it easier for individuals to ask questions, express their concerns or ideas, volunteer to tackle ambiguous problems and take risks together.
My role is to continue to hire curious people, encourage everyone’s individual curiosity and create opportunities to spark curiosity.”
What are some things you do to inspire curiosity in your team?
As a leader, it is important that I keep abreast of the direction of the organization and discuss it with my team. I do the same with industry articles, news and announcements. Over time, this has resulted in the team spotting synergies between ideas, being inspired to leverage something built by another team or just sparking conversations on ways to improve our product and how we work.
One of the things my team tries to do whenever we are launching a new product or feature as an A/B test is to create a game around how it will go. An example of this was when we launched SEPA, cashless euro payments, as a new way to pay for Squarespace products. We had the team try to guess which country would be the first to reach a certain amount of purchases. This led to several members of the team trying to deep dive into our data to help with their predictions and a lively conversation around how to improve visibility in our metrics.
Tell us about a time when a team member’s curiosity manifested in a new idea, solution or feature.
Our team had the opportunity to collaborate on a new product offering that allows Squarespace customers to purchase shipping labels, and someone on my team asked about ways to see transaction volumes through our checkout process. Our product team appreciated the question and ultimately we made a relatively small change to the product to track this metric. It is wonderful to see curiosity lead to new ways of working and collaboration.
Known is a marketing company that combines consulting services with data science and artificial intelligence technology to develop brand strategies, campaigns, creative and more for companies including Meta, Univision and TikTok.
How have you created a culture of curiosity on your team? And how do you model this mindset as a leader?
Curiosity is a vital part of our success, but it needs to be carefully nurtured and modeled. Building a culture of curiosity starts with recruiting and hiring. We seek out candidates with non-traditional backgrounds, and our interview loops include intentionally open-ended case studies that reward people who use analytical approaches to discover new insights, bring their unique perspectives when answering questions or even challenge us with alternative ways of thinking, like whether the questions we’re asking are even the right ones.
After joining the company, employees work in collaborative teams with senior leaders who strive to model a curious mindset. Client consulting is a key part of our job, and it is easy to fall into the trap of performing “expertise” and avoiding the vulnerability that comes with expressing curiosity. Our managers model inquisitiveness by always asking “why” and “what if” questions, even in front of the clients we are trying to impress or senior leaders of the company. Through this, we show that this is a natural and integral part of developing breakthrough ideas.
We try something different on every client engagement, be it an analytical method, technology or deliverable, even if it ultimately doesn’t go into the final client deliverable.”
What are some things you do to inspire curiosity in your team?
We work hard to avoid the trap of leverage over learning. Companies sometimes unintentionally incentivize managers or employees to do what they know rather than trying something new. We try something different on every client engagement, be it an analytical method, technology or deliverable, even if it ultimately doesn’t go into the final client deliverable. This encourages Knowners to be curious. We learn something we’ve always wanted to try, even if it doesn’t go to a client.
We capture employees’ interests — for example gaming, VR or multicultural marketing — so when we win new opportunities in these domains we have a go-to list of intrinsically curious team members. We use “show and share” opportunities in department meetings to give visibility to others and inspire offline sharing of interests. We also provide opportunities for employees to shadow colleagues in other departments, which enhances collaborative work and provides the ability to uncover new career paths.
Further, we publish employee competencies that call out innovation and cross-company outreach as core values. Finally, we extend curiosity to the people we work with –– coffee with colleagues, clients and partners outside of the normal course of work.
Tell us about a time when a team member’s curiosity manifested in a new idea, solution or feature.
Recently, our team saw the benefits that come from being curious about our clients as human beings. We had finished an important engagement with a major client that was very well-received. In some companies, that would be the end of the story. But a member of our team continued to reach out to the client over lunches and coffees, having honest and informal conversations about what he wanted from his career. The client felt dispirited that even though the projects he commissioned went well, they seemed to lack long-term impact.
Our team brainstormed with the client and asked “why can’t we offer more than the standard deliverable?” to get stakeholders more engaged. They ultimately decided to create a podcast in collaboration with our creative studio designed to make the insights about the client’s customers jump off the page and engage his internal stakeholders beyond just the initial report delivery.
Being curious and learning about our client’s below-the-surface aspirations allowed us to work with him as a true partner.
