HOTEL BUSINESS REVIEW
JUNE FOCUS: Sales & Marketing

Curiosity: The Language of High Performance and Innovation

By Janet Gerhard Founder, Hospitality Gal, LLC | June 2019

This article was co-authored by Michael Hvisdos, Founder & CEO, Inquizo

Co-authored by Michael Hvisdos, Founder & CEO, Inquizo

Consider the new expectation of hospitality. No longer is it enough to provide clean rooms and a courteous staff; it is imperative that the hotel do whatever possible to create a differentiated experience – a nugget of personalization and delight that is not easily replicated which will stick with your guest and positively impact their intent to return. The same holds true for your sales and marketing efforts.

Consider the energy that can be unleashed from engaged property, regional and corporate teams when curiosity is embraced and focused on enhancing the guest experience.

With curiosity a prerequisite for high performance, how do you create a team, or better yet an organization of highly curious individuals?

The Imperfect Process of Selection

Science, the study of human behavior, and the measure of intellect are not new to business. For years organizations have been exploring ways to create correlations between personal traits and performance to give organizations a competitive edge.

We use grade point average (GPA) as a measure of success and a predictor of intelligence as a person moves from academia to business life. It was thought that high GPA would provide an organization with brain power (IQ) necessary for success. Organizations would hand pick students with high academic performance. In hotels, especially in our front of house areas we look for extraverts with high energy and a knack for engaging with others. Organizations quickly realized, however, that strong academic performance did not always translate into business success nor did it ensure individuals with high IQ could apply knowledge in an ever-changing business environment.

As such, organizations and researchers concluded that well-rounded individuals would more likely be able to adapt better in a dynamic business environment. Selection criteria were adjusted to find individuals with more rounded backgrounds. Prior to scientific measurement, this was our first attempt at striking a balance between IQ and EQ (emotional intelligence). Once again, organizations observed varying degrees of success with this approach.

Researchers have since developed sophisticated tests to provide companies with comprehensive, precision reports on an individual's intellectual capacity (ability to learn), IQ, and EQ. Testing is expensive, and it can take someone hours to complete. Even then, the ability to precisely predict performance is haphazard at best.

Now introduce data driven tools. These tools harvest key words and phrases so companies can process resumes by the hundreds or even thousands. Using algorithms, resumes are quickly reduced down to assumedly the best candidate or the perceived best fit so organizations don't waste valuable time with candidates the algorithm deems are not "ideal." Even with these tools we only have a 50/50 shot of predicting performance.

So how can organizations achieve better success with not only the people they hire but those they want to retain long-term?

We believe this question is not just an issue for new hires, but also a systemic problem that is plaguing almost all companies. It does not matter if the company is young or old, large or small, successful or unsuccessful; most businesses have no idea what performance they are capable of achieving. As a result, they plateau into a comfortable area that is acceptable to them or their shareholders. Worse, many struggle to consistently meet desired performance commitments.

For the latter groups, the playbook is always the same…reorganization after reorganization. After reorganizations come new marketing messages. The packaging is different, but the approach is the same. After marketing doesn't work, we rebrand. Yes, we know the approaches can vary, but the playbooks are the same or amazingly similar. In today's language we refer to this as transformation.

The Engagement Crisis

This issue around transformation and how business is languishing with it is both simple and complex. But, before we can discuss root causes and what can be done to address them, we must shine a spotlight on the one of the biggest problems organizations are faced with today: employee engagement. According to Gallup's 2017 State of the American Workplace, the U.S. (and the world at large) is in the midst of an employee engagement crisis. The report revealed that in 2016, only 33% of U.S. employees were engaged -- involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace. The majority of employees (51%) are not engaged and haven't been for quite some time. This is especially concerning when you consider that actively disengaged employees are almost twice as likely as engaged employees to seek new jobs.

While perhaps not obvious, the link between employee selection and engagement is critical because the connection ties back to a common cause of disengagement businesses are not paying attention to today: The impact of curiosity on business success.

Innovation Is Paramont to Success

Business is changing. Yes, this sounds cliche. Everyone says a constant to business is change. Evolve or die. But what most people don't pay attention to is the pace of change in business today. The rise of big data and ever evolving technology (including AI) is accelerating change and adding a complexity to business that is almost incomprehensible. As such, CEOs of all major companies are placing bets on new and different offerings like never before.

Marriott announces its new experience-driven loyalty program, Bonvoy. Accor will roll out their experience-driven loyalty program, ALL, later this year. The investment and launch of these striking programs are supported with research on how organizations are actively figuring out how to reposition for future market share and profitability. Marketing and sales is intrinsically linked to experience.

It was KPMG International's report Now or Never Global CEO Outlook 2016 when 21% of CEOs said fostering innovation is the single biggest strategic priority for their business. An overwhelming 82% of CEOs said they were concerned their existing current products and services will not be relevant in 3 years. The 2018 edition shows CEOs are confident in their company's growth prospects and it's the external threats such as geopolitical volatility, cyber security risk (ahem, Marriott) and demographic shifts that are tempering their optimism.

KPMG is not alone in finding that innovation has risen to a near imperative for business leaders. In the 2017 PwC CEO Survey of about 1,400 chief executives, innovation was the number one area CEOs wanted to strengthen in order to seize new opportunities. In surveying nearly 450 executives around the world at enterprises with more than $100 million in revenue, Bain & Company found innovation was also top of mind. Two-thirds said their companies made innovation one of their top three priorities. Yet less than 25% believed their companies were effective innovators. Even fewer, just 20%, said they were strong at "breakthrough" innovation.

Before we delve into the link between curiosity and innovation, here is what every business should know about innovation: Businesses that demonstrate higher levels of innovation ALWAYS outperform other business. By how much? In 2009, Boston Consulting Group found that innovative companies achieved significantly higher total shareholder return premiums – 4.3% higher over three years and 2.6% higher over 10 years – that there less innovative industry peers.

The importance of innovation is undeniable. Organizations that get innovation right significantly outperform other organizations. The reason for this is curiosity. There is a simple formula that drives innovation in every company: Curiosity + Creativity = Innovation (see illustration above).

It is impossible to innovate without creativity, and it is even more impossible to be creative unless you have curious people and a curious company!

Curiosity is the linchpin. Hire for curiosity and you have a better chance of success. Nurture and grow curiosity and a company's creativity and ability to innovate go up. By allowing people to be more curious to question the status quo and stretch each other's thinking, engagement and, as a result, business performance will be off the charts. Employee engagement studies (Gallup 2013) show that engaged employees perform 202% better on performance drivers than other employees. More recently, Harvard Business Review featured The Business Case for Curiosity in its September-October 2018 edition. A wide range of benefits were noted including fewer decision-making errors, reduction in group conflict, open communication and performance. Our research ties curiosity directly to higher sales performance.

We see curiosity in all kinds of positions at high performing organizations. Subconsciously we know it's important, but we fail to realize how critical it is to ongoing business success. What's worse, most organizations by design, through leadership and processes, are creating environments that impede and destroy curiosity. And they don't even realize it's happening.

The great news is this curiosity suppression can be turned around. Curiosity can be protected, developed and grown in any organization.

Learning To Be More Curious

For years researchers have wrestled over whether there was a difference between curiosity and IQ. Most would discuss them interchangeably or refer to curiosity as a subset of IQ. Like IQ, curiosity was thought to be intrinsic to each individual. For that reason researchers spent very little time understanding curiosity. These conclusions were incorrect.

As this field of study starts to emerge, we have learned a great deal. We know there are two types of curiosity ---Diversive and Epistemic. Diversive curiosity is immediate gratification curiosity, or what is commonly known as the Google effect. This is where we want to get an immediate answer on a topic or question. Diversive curiosity is valuable in guest-facing employees who are frequently asked questions about the local area. Quick, immediate gratification may solve an immediate need, but this type of curiosity does not foster innovation.

Epistemic curiosity is a learned behavior that brings significant value to the organization. It is goal-oriented and generally stems from inspiration or necessity. Think about the "art" of developing meaningful surprise + delight moments for your guests – they are successful when well-designed and executed. Epistemic curiosity is on display when one expends extra effort and a desire to dig deeper to better understand causality or further develop an idea. When employees take the time and energy to investigate their ideas and solutions, they learn how to mine for and find relevant information, naturally strengthening the behavior of how to be curious.

Behaviors can be nurtured or suppressed, and this is where most companies fail. What drastically impacts curiosity levels and makes them vary so greatly in organizations is both culture and climate. Supportive organizations have some of the most curious people because they are more nurturing. However, even in these organizations we see wide variability in curiosity levels because while culturally they may be more supportive, at the individual team level, leaders create climates (or environments) which are inconsistent with this culture. Rigid, hierarchal or command-and-control organizations suppress and even stifle curiosity. Organizations with high levels of structure and process definitely fall into this category.

This is why curiosity goes beyond hiring and selection. By understanding where curiosity is growing and where it is being suppressed we can work with teams to create better climates and enhance curiosity levels to drive greater performance, including higher sales.

Energizing Curiosity

There are existing measures of curiosity, but they center on personal well-being and their reliance on self-report limits insights and has obvious biases. The best way to measure curiosity in business people is through actual and observed behaviors. Managers should be listening for words that refer to what is likely or probable and convey openness. More curious individuals have the tendency to refer less to general actions (e.g., act, adventure, approach, arise) and use intensifiers to amplify concepts (e.g., considerably, enormously, extremely, highly). More generally, they speak little less about doing stuff and instead consider options, using more words that convey a sense of likelihood, probability and providence.

As you consider how to energize curiosity in your teams look for opportunities to:

Be intentional
Practice asking better questions
Learn more about other employees and your guests
Encourage experimentation
Brainstorm new approaches together
Foster collaboration and sharing across functional teams

With high curiosity, both knowledge and perspective are built over time.

Hiring and retaining the right people remains one of the single biggest challenges for hotels. By selecting curious individuals and creating an environment to develop, nurture and encourage curiosity, your hotel holds the key to unlocking its ability to innovate. What makes us think so? Simple…for any business to continue to innovate, it has to be creative. The only way to stay creative is to be curious.

It all starts with CURIOSITY!

/ SLIDES

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If you choose to purchase a subscription, member subscription payments can be made in U.S. Dollars, as well as a variety of international currencies. Membership terms are Annual Recurring, and Monthly Recurring. The Annual Recurring subscription is an annual commitment and subscribers will be charged each consecutive billing cycle. Annual Recurring subscriptions can be cancelled after the first billing cycle and within 30-days of the billing date for a full refund. Monthly Recurring subscriptions are ongoing and subscribers will be charged each consecutive monthly billing cycle. Monthly Recurring subscriptions can be cancelled after the first month and within 7 days of the monthly billing cycle for a full refund.

12. PAYMENT AUTHORIZATION

Payment for the services provided to you in, at, through or in association with HotelExecutive may be made by automatic credit card, debit card, direct debit, bankwire or Paypal and other approved payment means offered in, at, through or in association with HotelExecutive, and you hereby authorize HotelExecutive and its agents to transact such payments on your behalf.

You hereby authorize HotelExecutive's Internet Payment Service Provider to charge your credit card to pay for your membership to HotelExecutive. You further authorize HotelExecutive's Internet Payment Service Provider to charge your credit card for any and all purchases of products, services in association with HotelExecutive. You agree to be personally liable for all charges incurred by you in association with your access or other use of any content provided by HotelExecutive or any third party in association with HotelExecutive. You acknowledge and agree that your liability for all such charges shall continue after termination of your access or any type of membership arrangement with HotelExecutive.

In the event that you have chosen to have your membership automatically rebilled, unless and until you notify HotelExecutive that you wish to cancel or terminate your membership to HotelExecutive, you hereby agree and authorize HotelExecutive's Internet Payment Service Provider to automatically renew your membership to HotelExecutive on a continuing basis and to charge your credit card (or other payment means you have selected) to pay for the ongoing cost of your membership. You hereby further authorize HotelExecutive's Internet Payment Service Provider to charge your credit card (or other approved payment means you have selected) for any and all purchases of products, services and entertainment provided to in, at, through or in association with HotelExecutive.

13. PRIVACY POLICY

The following is the Privacy Policy for HotelExecutive

We can be reached via telephone, email, or online at our contact page. When you visit our site we do not log any information regarding your domain or email address. Information Sharing: We do not share user information with any third parties other than via press release distribution as described below.

Hotel Newswire is a newswire service that distributes press releases on behalf of our users. If you decide to submit a press release for distribution through our system we will transmit your entire press release including any personal information therein contained to our media contacts and online distribution points including search engines. This is the only redistribution of your information that we engage in. Your submission of press releases through our system indicates consent with this policy. The information we collect during your registration process is used to notify users about updates to our service and inform users of any special events hosted by Hotel Newswire. This information is not shared with other organizations for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

Cookies: Our system requires the use of cookies to enable the user to log back into our website to access information from the newswire, without having to log in each time using the required username and password.

If you do not want to receive email from us in the future, please let us know by following instructions included in our communication with you. Users who supply us with telephone numbers online may receive telephone contact from us regarding their account, or informing them of new products and services available on the HotelExecutive website. If you do not wish to receive such telephone calls, please edit your account and remove your phone number from your account profile. This can be done from your user account menu.

Ad Servers: We do not partner with or have any relationship with any ad server companies. From time to time, we may use customer information for new uses not previously disclosed in our privacy notice. If our information practices change at any time, we will post the policy changes to our website to notify you of these changes and provide you with the ability to opt out of these new uses. If you are concerned about how your information is used, you should check back at our website periodically.

Upon request we provide site visitors with access to all information (including proprietary information) that we maintain about them. Users can access this information by logging in to their account.

Security: We always use industry-standard encryption technologies while transferring and receiving user data exchanged with our site. We have appropriate security measures in place in our physical facilities to protect against the loss, misuse, or alteration of information that we have collected from you on our site. We do not store credit card information in our systems.

If you feel that this site is not following its stated information policy, you may contact us.

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JUNE FOCUS: Sales & Marketing