👶🏻 🔥 Why We Should All Show Up with a Beginner’s Mindset
Beginners ask “Why?” and “What if?” rather than “I already know.”
How many times in the product development process have you heard, “Oh, we’ve tested that before.” That statement always raises my hackles because A/B testing is a science. Only is that statement true if all the same conditions in the test were met the second time, which is rarely the case. In between tests, the product environment changes, as well as the insights the team has learned. What really matters is being curious and open-minded, and not dismissing the question prompting the experiment.
Growing up, my parents taught me to listen first, observe, and learn. Humility was the ultimate value. As I’ve applied this value in my life and work, I’ve made the mistake of acting like an “expert” too often. I’ve been humbled by this mistake many times, learning that a new way of doing things, or seeing through the eyes of someone else has great benefits.
"In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s there are few." - Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
There are numerous companies, including my current company, GetYourGuide, that have values around curiosity and treasuring failure for the journey of learning it encapsulates. But how do you actually apply these values pragmatically in your work day to day?
A beginner’s mindset is an approach to work and life.
Teams that adopt a beginner’s mindset are adaptable and constantly learning.
Being comfortable in the ambiguity of something new allows for exploration and innovation.
Leaders with a beginner’s mindset listen and empower.
An environment of “newness” is open, safe, and enjoyable.
Teams that adopt a beginner’s mindset are adaptable and constantly learning.
Startups are constantly evolving organizations where hypergrowth in the workforce is a common challenge. In this scenario, there’s hardly a choice not to adapt when the alternative is defeat.
The resilience of a startup’s employees can make or break a product. In healthy startups, I have found that there are common behavioral traits which will amplify the company’s ability to thrive–constantly questioning the status quo and weighting learning and adaptability over hard skills.
Asking lots of questions helps to dig deeper into the why and what of a problem, rather than the how. By asking these two questions, a team can get to the root of a problem and have more meaningful solutions for their users.
Recently, there have been challenges in my team due to siloed, vertical thinking, rather than working more horizontally across the business. Siloed thinking leads to many challenges. Redundancies, lack of shared knowledge, and narrow perspectives to name a few.
When I first came into GetYourGuide, there were parts of the customer experience that repeated the same UX format in different parts of the flow with slight tweaks. There was bloat in the user experience, making the design system more complex and not truly solving the customer's needs. When asking the team why a complex system had been created, we uncovered that very little conversations were happening across teams working within a similar area.
We started to ask questions “What customer problems are you solving in this state?” The answers were a mixed bag of past test learnings. When we asked, “Why do you think those modules are a better experience?” Positive moves in metrics were the answer. The thing is, metrics can be deceiving and overrelied upon to the sacrifice of the longer term customer value.
After coaching and “let’s give it a try,” the team moved forward with stripping away some of the modules that had been built up over time to some standard industry best practices. What we learned is a much simpler experience had no effect on the metrics the team was driving. The hypothesis that the experience was far more targeted on the key customer problems and reducing the overall cognitive load. I think what the team learned was to be open to other perspectives, as well as be willing to explore those perspectives.
Being comfortable in the ambiguity of something new allows for exploration and innovation.
Ambiguity is a right bitch. It can leave you frozen, not knowing which way to go, or what to do next. Teams can go down rabbit holes, spinning on ineffective topics in an attempt to fill the void from lack of clarity.
Making clarity from ambiguity can be taught. I’ve been in situations many times where a leader asked me to do something and I had to define the problem space by using whatever means of insights at my disposal.
One of my favorite ways to work with ambiguity is to take a broad topic and break it down into a few big ideas to explore. Let’s say my team was asked to find new ways to highlight personalized deals within a digital marketplace. What next?
Gather some research:
What are other best in class marketplaces doing with deals?
What do we know about what our customers want with pricing?
What should be our product guardrails? Brand? Our inventory? Our winning advantage?
What hypotheses can we draw from those?
Do some deep exploration:
Ask the team to think about the problem from different extremes. Choose one hypothesis and overindex on the need to parse out details into the distinct problem spaces.
Don’t dismiss unconventional ideas, let them play out.
Encourage looking at the problem from new perspectives. Break the team out of their comfort zone by examining the motivations for discounts and how they are used in industry scenarios outside of their own.
Put the ideas in front of people.
Put the ideas in front of anyone you can - friends, coworkers, customers.
Document some key takeaways and keep refining.
There are many other ways to navigate through uncertainty, and the most important thing is to not feel threatened by it, but embrace it. Help your team say, “This is new, let’s play.” Tackling the problem one step at a time, like learning how to ride a bike for the first time, can be a little scary, but it’s also exhilarating. In no time, you’re riding your bike with confidence.
Leaders with a beginner’s mindset listen and empower.
It’s our job as leaders to create an environment of play. This is an ask questions, don’t tell type of leadership. It is also our responsibility to provide clarity on what kinds of problems the team should focus on solving. This clarity plus a safe space to explore is a formula for great thinking.
Recently, my team went through a north star exercise of where the customer product could go in two years based on the customer’s needs and the future business strategy. An IC principle went on a journey defining what we should be solving for and why. She made a framework to guide the team towards those definitions with user stories centered around strategic bets and the insights we had from research. After the user stories were co-created, the team had a couple weeks to play.
All along the way, my partners and myself prompted the team with questions based on our experience and expertise. Asking the right questions was key, as opposed to guiding with specific tactics. What resulted were ideas neither of us had thought of before. The UX team was a mix of tenured to new, and we encouraged them all to not let the past dictate the future. Encouraging bigger picture thinking and innovation inspired us all.
An environment of “newness” is open, safe, and enjoyable.
A beginner’s mindset supports the joy of learning something new. This means not making assumptions and listening to what can be learned from others.
It’s well known that an environment of pay (blame for a failure) rather than play (rewarding learning) is demotivating and can cause a toxic work environment. Focusing on what the team learned instead of the loss, creates a safe environment, one without judgment. Celebrate the learnings publicly. Reward the team’s journey and build their confidence by taking failures in stride.
I’ve started recruiting for similar open-minded mindsets and approaches–soft skills more than hard skills. In the rapidly changing tech environment, learners are what will be needed over tactical UX skills, which automated tools could replace. A learner is much more willing to think out of the box creatively, training AI with powerful creative ideas. GenAI is only as good as the input it gets.
I also look for traits of trying things that someone is good at, as well as bad at. Leaning into something uncomfortable in order to push yourself and not back away from it is a key behavior I want on my team. Being willing to try something you’re bad at, means you’re a hyper-learner.
Having an environment of learners means faster adoption of new ways of doing things, and an adaptable approach to pivots in strategy or new technologies. I believe every skill can be learned if you’re open minded and brave enough trying something new. It just takes practice.
Last week, myself and a product partner held a workshop with a XFN team of data scientists, engineers, PMs and UX to discuss how GenAI can improve our current internal processes for product development. We broadly prompted the team where automation could replace a step in our process. Folks were a little nervous, but we asked them to give it a shot. A half hour later, over fifty good ideas were generated. I noticed that none of the attendees gave ideas for their discipline only, but across functions. The willingness to try out things we haven’t done as a company before was inspiring.
In work as in life, approaching your world with awe rewards with the joy in seeing something new every day.