Book Review: The Moment You Can’t Ignore, O’Connor and Dornfeld, 2014 (and some thoughts on the Building Careers in Anthropology Conference (NYC, 2022))
Book Review: The Moment You Can’t Ignore, O’Connor and Dornfeld, 2014.
I finished digesting this book while taking some family time in Park City Utah this past week. Love the mountains, my family, and time to refresh and recharge—biking through the Wasatch Mountains with the fam is like drinking from the fountain of youth. Anyway, this book is about managing the stress of change within organizations. But for me it was confirmation of the successes that can be had using ethnographic methods in corporate workspaces.
From the introduction, “when the stress of change becomes too much for an organization, the situation often turns into an “un-ignorable moment”—an event or action, or even a comment, that stops you and your organization in its tracks, a moment when it becomes blindingly clear that new ways of working are clashing with existing ones.” Basically, when previous tacit rules for work clash with new explicit rules/goals/expectations organizations experience culture clash.
I met one of the authors, Barry Dornfeld, earlier this year in NYC at a conference for practicing (applied) anthropologists held at Fordham University. Barry couldn’t have been more generous with his time and experience and even gave me a copy of his book. But before I get to the book, let me say something about anthropology and the conference.
The conference was a revelation for me. Scores of anthropologists all actively working in the business world and openly advocating the use of ethnographic methodologies in corporate setting is still a bit of a surprise for me. While I’ve always consciously tried to use ethnographic methods in my own work, I’ve spent also most of my professional career in Asia, there are no applied anthropologists out there and I use my academic training somewhat covertly amongst the MBAs, PhEds, and engineers that I worked with—many of them commenting on my anthropology bonafides with something to the effect of, “we don’t want any of the fuzzy stuff (culture), we just want hard numbers.” And even before the “real world” world rejection of anthropology, in grad school (NIU, 1996) I was told directly that using anthropology on behalf of corporations was tantamount to being a traitor to the discipline. One professor went so far as to tell me that I should keep my professional plans on the down-low so as to not offend other professors and limit my chances for letters of recommendation and support.
So I felt like a kid in a candy shop at the conference. I was thrilled to meet with, listen to, learn from all the active professionals. It was gratifying to meet so many anthropologists were working as anthropologists (not just using some ethnographic methods) outside of academia and customer design. Robert Adams, Gillian Tett, Elisabeth Briody, Barry Dornfeld, Daphnie Pierre, Rial Nolan, Scarleth Milenka.
A couple of highlights from the conference included using the anthropological tool of identifying “code switching” amongst groups within organizations. Code switching is usually identified in people that are bilingual or multi-lingual, as they switch back and forth between languages as per their own fluency or that of their audience. But as I was listening to Robert Adams talk about his work in the corporate world I realized that professionals switch “languages” as they talk up and down corporate hierarchies. Engineers switch vocab as they talk with sales people, and most all employees formalize their speaking in conversations with C-level admin (though C-level people don’t switch, showing their social status by forcing others to adapt to them).
A personal example of this occurred when I attended my first department meeting as an academic anthropologist teaching in a Business-school. I quickly realized that I wasn’t fluent in the Business-school dialect of academic English. I had to both learn some new vocabulary and code switch between my known Humanities dialect and this new Business-school dialect of academic English.
Another highlight, a confirmation really, was from Gillian Tett. She said, “The exact same skills that I use to study Tajik wedding rituals I use to study investment banking.” Bingo! I realized this even before I went to graduate school. Once I’d begun working in Thailand and China (consulting and project management respectively) I realized that the same skills that I had learned via ethnographic monographs I could use to understand corporate workspaces, professional procedures, and white collar employees (e.g. studying Thai lawyers, Chinese tech workers, overseas Chinese middle-men, and the urban environments, businesses, and people at different religious sites in Thailand).
Best line from the conference: Rial Nolan: “People don’t listen to anthropologists because anthropologists don’t say useful things. Margret Meed dead is better copy than most anthropology journals.” No wonder we’re insecure and underemployed!
Only one thing disappointed me at the conference, the same insecurity that plagues Anthropology in general was on display here too (“but anthropology has so much value if people would just listen to us,” we all complain while making someone else’s coffee). At least the conference was attacking this pathology head on—yes, anthro is undervalued, but here’s what you can do about it! https://anthrocareerready.net/ HOORAH!!
Now back to Barry and the book.
At the conference, along with maybe a dozen other speakers, Barry and his team presented experiences where they had used an anthropological lens in organizational consulting—similar to what I’ve been surreptitiously doing, but with a name and more defined processes. And their book is more of the same—examples of the anthropological tools and processes that make their business model work.
Throughout the examples in the book, in universities, hospitals, professional and family organizations, participant observation and ethnographic methods are detailed and highlighted as the tools for understanding cultural problems and leading culture change.
For me as a professional anthropologist, one of “truths” of using ethnographic methods is the simple reality that business moves at a much faster pace than does academic research. Consequently, applied anthropologists must conduct participant observation at the speed of business, a decidedly fastest pace than traditional academic research. Using speed-ethnography doesn’t mean sacrificing quality research methodology, rather it means understanding culture and organizations and people before participant observation (like writing a dissertation proposal!)—exactly what anthropologists claim to know how to do! The application of fieldwork methods in the “real world” should be a core of anthropology teaching, but it’s unfortunately relatively unknown and almost never taught in anthro programs.
Another significant concept is the idea that organizational change reflects larger societal changes. The nature of employees (temporary collaborators working on irregularly aligned goals), and the flattening of organizational hierarchies matches both the individual focus of multi-career professionals and the new equalities and realities of younger tech-driven society. Organizations need to understand correctly and adapt accurately to not just take advantage of these new realities for their own success but to offer support, promise, challenge, and opportunity to (potential) employees in general and leaders specifically.
The authors claim that when we understand (organizational) culture we can answer 4 primary (and classic anthropological) questions about organization effectiveness. What is our identity? Who is in charge? How do we lead? and What is our future? Really the “from what into what:” The now, the who, the how, and the where. To unpack the answers to these questions the book emphasizes spending time discovering the tacit and implicit behaviors that drive daily behaviors in organizations.
For example, participant observation allows for the discovery of not who has which title, but who actually leads opinions and people regardless of/despite titles. When the unspoken how and who of an organization are defined then the cultural picture becomes clearer and the levers for and obstacles to change can be defined. Change happens more through influence than leaders.
The book’s strength is the practical examples of how these anthropological process work in professional organizations of all types. The authors take time to tell the stories of culture change—from cultures in trouble, through the processes of identifying the people and steps necessary to enact change, to the eventual differences in behaviors and outcomes.
Three general how-to’s detailed throughout the chapters are the concepts of: making the tacit explicit, pull don’t push, and move toward resistance. Uncovering unspoken standards is pretty much Anthro 101, and finding champions within your organization is Business leadership 101. The addition of co-opting the skeptics in this trio of steps to creating better organizational cultures enhances both of the first two. Skeptics usually aren’t problem makers or stubborn on purpose—there is a (hidden) logic to their resistance, something that needs to be resolved before culture change can be successful. And the often can bring along others once they are onboard.
If I could ask for more, I’d want more details of the processes. Which theories apply to different organizations and how do they figure that out? Are their different methodologies they use for different types of conflict and groups? How does their version of “speed-ethnography” work within a limited schedule? What additional steps are necessary to go from observing culture to changing it and how to support culture change anthropologically?
I personally will contact Barry and ask these questions, but I also hope that there is a second book in the works!
