Curiosity serves as a driving force behind learning. When individuals are curious, they are more likely to seek out new information, explore different perspectives, and engage with others.

Self-Reflection:

If you findy our work-related curiosity waning, it's likely that boredom is setting in, leading to a lack of positive energy.

Reflect on the reasons for your lack of curiosity: Do you need to learn something new? are you motivated on a day to day basis? do you allow yourself to experiment and are you personally motivated for the things you do?

Strategies for building work curiosity:

1. Break Routines

• Deliberately disrupt mindless routines by:
• Doing things in a different order.
• Working from different places or locations.
• Playing with formats, such as changing templates or presentation styles.
  

2. Challenge Your Thinking

Set challenging tasks, such as:

• Assuming your work could be done smarter and generate at least 5 alternative approaches, and try one.
• Consider how a person you admire might approach your work challenges differently, and try it.

3. Ask Others for input and ideas

Reach out and ask others for input on how you could do things differently and try it out.

4. Monthly Reflection

Allocate at least 30 minutes each month to question your approaches and track your progress. Put this reflective time in your calendar for the next 3 months.

Team Dynamics:

Low levels of curiosity in a team often stem from challenges with the five lower-level Team-Drivers.

1. Revisit Shared Results

Dedicate a couple of hours to revisit shared goals, challenging assumptions:

• What has changed since the goals were formulated?
• What has the team learned?
• Can the goals be measured more precisely?
• How can the goals be made sharper?
   

2. Energy and Curiosity Discussion

Use the discussion to elevate the team's energy and curiosity. Even if the formal definition of
shared results doesn't change, the discussion should inspire curiosity.
 

3. Discussion on Changes

Discuss possible changes based on the shared results discussion:

• What should the team start doing?
• What should the team do more of?
• What should the team do less of?
• What should the team stop doing?

4. Basic Routines for Team Curiosity

• Break routines in team meetings every three months by changing settings, timing, or agendas.
• Periodically rotate physical seating arrangements to encourage fresh perspectives.
• Establish peer-to-peer reviews where two peers take turns presenting their approaches, seeking open feedback and ideas without an obligation to change.
• Solicit ideas from stakeholders on ways to enhance the team's value delivery.
  

Experimentation is crucial to adaptiveness as it allows for rapid learning, iteration, and refinement, ensuring that strategies and solutions can swiftly evolve in response to changing circumstances.

Self-reflection

Instead of spending too much time perfecting a solution or concept before it reaches the target audience, adaptive people find ways to test new ideas with their
stakeholders early on. The philosophy is to "fail fast" rather than drag out the pain. Experience also shows that early feedback from real users/stakeholders improves the solution in 9 out of 10 cases.

The prerequisite for experimentation is some form of idea that you believe has potential. Good questions to ask yourself before investing too much effort in
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 whom
• How you will do it
• What results 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:

1. 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 happen.
   

2. Prototypes:

• Prototypes cover a range of engagement techniques from primitive sketches illustrating how a concept/solution will look to a fully working prototype that looks exactly like the final solution.
• The basic 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 go through several iterations—and are often dumped and rethought—before a useful version reaches 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.

Team Dynamics:

A team can vary in its level of experimentation, and Fostering this as a team habit is achievable; however, the primary prerequisite for experimentation is cultivating a culture open to learning from failure, and if the team discourages mistakes or avoids discussions about failure, the willingness to experiment diminishes.

If this is a challenge, examining foundational TeamDrivers, particularly"Accountability," may be beneficial, encompassing aspects like trust, healthy conflict, commitment, and shared results.

To integrate experimentation into your team, considerinitiating a brainstorming session on a specific challenge, challenging the defined problem, assuming it's a symptom of underlying root causes, and generating ideas to address each cause, fostering a positive and open environment where refining and experimenting with selected ideas become integral to the team's culture.

The most important rule for this process is to be open andto 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.

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

Self-Reflection:

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.

Reflect on the reasons for your lack of playfulness: Are you in a safe environment? Do you allow yourself to experiment? Are you personally motivated for the things you do?

Strategies for building fun and playfulness:

• Approach tasks with a creative and playful mindset. Find ways to inject elements of fun into your work, such as gamifying certain aspects, introducing creative challenges, or incorporating playful elements into team projects. This not only makes your work environment more enjoyable but also enhances creativity and collaboration.
  
• Organize social activities with colleagues or friends outside of work-related settings. Whether it's a team-building event, a casual gathering, or a shared hobby, engaging in non-work-related social activities allows for more relaxed and playful interactions.
  
• Infuse humor into your everyday conversations and interactions. Share light-hearted anecdotes, funny stories, or jokes that are appropriate for the context. This helps create a positive and enjoyable atmosphere.

Team Dynamics:

If fun and playfulness do not come naturally in your team, start by considering the reasons for this lack of playfulness: Are we in a safe environment? Do we allow ourselves to experiment? Are we personally motivated for the things we do?

If your team is performing well on all the above and you still need a helping hand to enjoy more fun and playfulness, try some of the strategies mentioned above. Odds are that, for example, doing enjoyable activities together outside of work will also increase the level of enjoyment at work.

Elaborating on the above:

• Organize team-building activities with a creative and fun theme. This could include costume days, where team members dress up according to a chosen theme, or team challenges with playful elements.
  
• Introduce elements of gamification into work tasks. Create friendly competitions or challenges that allow team members to earn points, badges, or other rewards for completing tasks or achieving milestones. This not only adds a playful aspect to work but also enhances motivation and engagement.
  
• Occasionally transform routine meetings into casual and fun gatherings making room for improvisation and unconventional ideas. Start with a light icebreaker or team check-in where members share something interesting or amusing about their week. Integrate games or quick team-building exercises that promote laughter and interaction.

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

Room for failure is essential to adaptiveness as it fosters a culture of continuous learning, experimentation, and resilience, enabling individuals and organizations to navigate uncertainties, iterate on strategies, and evolve in response to changing circumstances.

Self-Reflection:

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; however, 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 the probability (%) with the consequence (cash value), and rank after the 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!

Team Dynamics:

If your team is overly risk averse, start by considering the reasons for this: Are we transparent and honest with one another? Do we engage in constructive conflict when needed? Do we challenge and provide feedback to one another? Do we focus on achieving collective results? Do we allow ourselves to experiment?

If your team is performing well on all the above and you still need a helping hand you could consider:

Initiating a “Lessons Learned” Session:

- Any team makes mistakes, but a risk-averse team often avoids talking about them. Therefore, just opening up for discussions on failures and learnings will help facilitate dialogue.

- Focus on forward-thinking learnings and what we will do differently next time or in similar situations.

- Avoid any form of individual blame or delving into “who did this and said what.”

Demonstrate “Calculated Risks Thinking”:

- Work with “calculated risk thinking” (described in the previous section) for an upcoming project and take time to explain the thinking behind it.

- This will shift "making mistakes" from being something to feel guilty about into something we can discuss, work with, and become increasingly better at predicting.