Successful Teams Embrace Curiosity

I have been doing some personal retrospectives on past client engagements to identify what patterns to carry forward and what is better left behind.  My most successful projects have included not only cross discipline teams, but team members who have cross discipline curiosity.  What is cross discipline curiosity?  I'll define cross discipline curiosity as a desire to know or learn something outside of your specific purview.  When you are curious about other disciplines you are able to collaborate at a deeper level.  

Curious teams ask the following questions:

• As a team member, how do the decisions I make in my discipline impact marketing/design/product/quality?
• As a team member, how have decisions made by other disciplines impact my objectives?
• As a team member, what questions do I need to ask/conversations do I need to have to ensure we produce the best possible outcome?

Encouraging this type of collaboration will ultimately increase team confidence and result in a better product.  Embrace your curiosity to increase the success of your teams.

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