Most of the stories of our lives begin with a natural curiosity. It’s prevalent in us as children when we’re figuring out the world around us. And as we take on the responsibilities of adulthood, our natural need to quest sometimes falls by the wayside with the pressures we face. But, this need to be curious, to journey forward is a necessity in our survival.

Organizational Questing This is also the case for organizations. Businesses don’t get better by being stagnant. Sometimes the curse of an organization is success or long-term maturity. They, or actually the individuals within the organizations, need to continuously seek for better or different. Our Mindscape team helps organizations with this need to quest. It begins with research by understanding how stakeholders search for information online that our clients can provide. This is a complicated process, one that we have honed well and has provided clarity for many of our clients. After our intensive research, we then provide a strategy to our clients on how to best incorporate this information into their online content.

Individual Questing We have similar expectations for Mindscape employees, or contributing team members (CTM). We expect that they are naturally curious, always questing for more challenges, opportunities and knowledge. This keeps them motivated to do better work for our clients, to impress their team members and to better themselves. This process also begins with our CTM’s continuous research of the latest technology, trends and developments in our industry. We hold them accountable for this process during our monthly staff meetings and within our internal Facebook fan page. We then help our team members develop a strategy for their work through our annual goal setting and performance review process. And finally, we assist them in carrying out their work strategy by providing resources for training and seminars.

But questing for more information, for clarity in purpose or for new ways of working, by itself, doesn’t lead to success for individuals or for organizations. The need to be connected with others, prevails.

Organizational Connecting In addition to this “questing” process, we also want to ensure that our clients are making the right connections online. Those to people who really seek the information/services/ ideas they can provide. Once we’ve completed the research and developed the online strategy, we help our clients talk to the appropriate stakeholders (we call them buyer personas) in the right places with the correct language. And we aren’t just talking about grammar here. We’re personalizing the content so the connection is valuable.

Individual Connecting And because business is all about relationships, we expect our CTM’s to develop strong connections with their internal team members; their business peers outside of our organization and to those in the larger community. The strong internal relationships should result in a seamless process for our clients as they experience our team. The networking with other professionals, helps our team members to search out best practices in their expertise. The larger community connections provide an opportunity to give back, which often results in success for the members of our community, relationships with new clients and healthy personal networks which did not exist before.

When we hire for our Mindscape team, is imperative these two talents exist within each team member. And as mentioned previously, we create a culture that invites everyone to practice these two talents often.

Put it into Action for Your Team:

Develop some interview questions that probe for these talents.

  • Tell me about a time you took on a project completely outside of your comfort zone. What resulted?

Encourage these behaviors continuously within your organization.

  • What do you/your team/your organization do regularly to practice questing and connecting?
  • What rewards would motivate these behaviors? Remember this won’t be a one-size fits all answer.

Measure the results of practicing these actions.

  • What is different today than ________ because we were curious and we made the right connections?

The beautiful part about questing and connecting, is that most often these two actions happen simultaneously. One of the best ways to seek out new knowledge and opportunities is through new connections or relationships. And as we share with our clients, the web provides us with lots of great tools to understand what we seek and how to best interact with others.