My reflections on building a curiosity practice at TCCC

At the end of 2023, we set the whole team at TCCC a professional development challenge – to become more curious around our industry, our clients’ world and/or their customers. To end this blog series, Heidi Sellier, one of the course leaders shares her reflections on the cultural change this initiative has brought about. 

At The Customer Closeness Company, we place a huge emphasis on training and personal development. Having witnessed the impact that Customer Curiosity Training can have on the culture and decision-making of an organisation, Charlotte Vicary and I embarked on leading this internal training with real conviction.  And now, six months on and five training sessions under our belt, we are witnessing the benefits of establishing a regular, sustainable curiosity practice across our team. Some of them intended, others a (welcome) surprise. 

Five principles underpin our approach to Customer Curiosity Training at TCCC; and the interplay of the five is where the magic really happens.

Principle one, ‘applying the laws of habit formation’ broke down what seemed like a big task (become more curious) into a tangible, achievable regular diary commitment.  This foundation gave our team the tools of ‘how to’. 

But it was the second principle ‘adopt an experimentation mindset’ where the fun really began.  With Curiosity Training came the directive to try different things, work out what did and didn’t work for each of us individually, and from that iterative approach arrive at a range of curiosity activities unique to each person.  It was freeing to have the space to explore.  The third principle of ‘capture your learnings’ also allowed for personal preference to dictate capture method choice.

Our fourth principle, ‘meeting at intervals’, matched the cadence and rhythm of habit formation.  Rome was not built in a day; and neither is the process of establishing a new habit!  Allowing six weeks between training sessions provided the time to experiment and learn from our practice, returning to training with either a sense of technique mastery, or a clear understanding of any blockers that were thwarting our mission. 

Meeting at intervals – sharing our curiosity practice only gained momentum as the training progressed.  At the team’s request, this was extended to including curiosity learnings in our Start the Week meetings, and organic ‘curiosity partnerships’ between those sharing a similar focus.  These spontaneous meetups facilitated connections across the business, regardless of experience level or seniority, sharing curiosity resources and insights – making connections both intellectually and personally.

And finally, our fifth principle ‘help each other’ was central to making the course feel truly transformative.  At the start of the course, all eyes were on us to deliver ideas and problem solve - much like moderating a group discussion. Over the six months though, the sense of ownership shifted. By the end of the course the responsibility for and progress towards an established, regular curiosity practice felt equally owned by everyone in the room. 

As you may be able to tell, Curiosity Training is something we have a real passion for at The Customer Closeness Company.  We’d like to congratulate our team on being most excellent trainees – and feel free to reach out to any of us to share our evangelical verve!

The Customer Closeness Company have a specialist team delivering Customer Curiosity Training to our clients. If any of the curiosity practice principles sound interesting to you, get in touch to discuss how we can use these principles to help you and your colleagues become more Customer Curious.