Curiosity killed the cat, not the marketer

Enabling curiosity in marketing teams

To us curiosity is a behaviour that many marketers possess.  We take great joy in being curious, if we were mechanics we will be popping the hood and take everything apart to understand how it works, fits together and diagnose the root problem. To create impactful marketing this is often needed, you need to look past superficial and make the right changes.

However, like many behaviours you need to create the right environment to create curious teams. In this blog, we will explore what we think are the key ingredients.

Space

It’s quite simple! Busy people don’t have time to be curious. As marketers we do a huge amount of work behind the scenes that people can’t see. Therefore, it can be very easy to get busy to the point we start churn and stop asking questions, being creative or just taking a moment to breath. This is why creating the time and space to explore problems or challenges is really important.

Creating space doesn’t have to be complicated it could be leaving space in your team meetings to discuss challenges or opportunities collectively. Or it could be blocking out a day in your diary to deep dive into that yummy data you’ve been meaning to fall down the rabbit hole and explore. Or sometimes it can be more about creating a collaborative space and running workshops to tackle ‘wicked’ problems together.

Promote collaboration over internal competition

One of the things that we’ve noticed about being curious, is that sometimes it can evoke a defensive response from people. Why are so many questions being asked about my project? Often mistaking the intent behind the questions and often you find this behavioural response in organisational cultures where there are internal silos and high competition between teams.

Moving past this isn’t easy, but it often starts with you as a leader. Setting shared objectives as well as individuals, setting expectations and defining what collaboration will look like for your team. And then role modelling the behaviours you want to see. Be open about your own projects, encourage questions and debates, be humble about your own limitations and wanting alternative perspectives. Reinforce the positive behaviours you see and take the time to celebrate diversity of thought.

Invest in data and insight to spark curiosity

As marketing leaders, we need to champion the use of insight and influence the wider organisation to ensure that they are investing in their data and insight to inform organisation strategy and business growth. For a team to be truly curious they need market and customer intelligence that is going to help them understand customer behaviour and therefore levers available to them to meet business needs.

Embracing uncertainty as a catalyst for growth

We recognise that it is not easy to always embrace uncertainty, especially when there is a growing pressure on performance and hitting those growth or business objectives. However, throughout our career we have seen some of the most successfully teams existing in a test and learn culture. We are not saying that you have to live a 100% of your time in uncertainty, more that you consistently spend a proportion of your week in the uncertain. Testing new channels, new ideas or tackling finding an answer to a question that could help tackle the complexity facing your team.

This is driven by an understanding that the sector is always evolving and to keep up we need to maintain curiosity and test new ideas. Enabling a test and learn environment includes space, tools and budget. But most importantly it needs leaders that are OK with failure, learning and evolving.