The
Curiosity
Kindling
It’s easy and safe to stay in your lane, but team members who are curious about coworkers beyond the silo walls have a better chance of performing well and being rewarded.
Key output: a data streams and sources map
A common response we have seen to feeling disrespected or undermined in design, product, or marketing teams is to try to “be more technical.” And that can be useful! If you like coding or chatting Linux vs Windows, awesome. But it’s also okay to want to focus on your craft.
Focusing on craft, however, should not shut you off from the wider company. Curiosity drives initiative and resourcefulness, two signs of practitioner maturity. We look more closely at any and all of the data streams your team has available in the company, map out which domain owns each (i.e. Customer Service, Data Science), and help you identify a key contact to introduce yourself to. We have seen repeatedly how keen people are to share knowledge with design, product, or marketing, if they just ask.
For example, we worked with a scrappy product team that knew they were missing user experience, but had not yet made a case to hire any designers. We assessed how they were making product decisions up to that point, mapped all available data streams in the business, and showed that they had untapped intel from their sales and customer service teams. We identified data types that would help with their decision-making and a key contact from each that could help them access the data. They were able to improve their user experience with data from other people who also routinely talk to prospective and existing customers.
Inspired by experiences at Uber, Transpire, and Kraken. Updated with research from employees at companies like Meta and Calm.