Anthropology in the Workplace
I’ve found it quite frustrating to see up close some organizational attempts at improving culture. We seem to make piecemeal attempts. At one moment, senior leadership may set out a new vision or a new set of expectations but there’s no resources for follow-up. At another time, there may be a change in processes or compensation that is intended to influence the culture of the organization, but they compete against incentives supporting stasis. Next, an initiative is unveiled that promises you autonomy and the ability to make decisions… but no-one tells your boss. It’s unfortunate, but it’s a pretty rare circumstance where we see an all-hands-on-deck effort to address organizational culture. When an organization does, they’re an anomaly, they’re newsworthy and they might just get bought out for $847 million.
Culture, it seems to me, is a pretty static, identifiable thing. If only someone had studied the essential elements of culture… which brings me to my post title. Isn’t anthropology ALL ABOUT understanding culture? Well, not quite. Google tells me there’s more to it than that: define: anthropology – the social science that studies the origins and social relationships of human beings
On Wikipedia, I learned that E.B. Tylor is one of the grandfathers of anthropology. He described culture as “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”
There’s a start! If we’re trying to address culture, this definition provides some assistance. First, we can acknowledge that culture is “complex.” Perhaps with that knowledge we can forever disavow the use of uni-dimensional solutions that barely scrape the surface of addressing culture. Second, what a helpful list: knowledge, belief, art, morals, laws and customs. Maybe this needs a little tinkering for the contemporary organization, but we see all of these in the workplace:
- knowledge in, well, knowledge, and how we transfer it, share it and use it
- belief in our paradigms, like “senior staff always knows best” and “mistakes are bad”
- art – well, this one’s a stretch. There’s not much expression at work. Our lack of expression – the corporate language and the way we communicate is our “art,” I think, and it is significant in defining our culture.
- morals like putting in lots of hours, being available 24/7, producing just what the boss asked for… you know, the required societal behaviours to earn promotion
- custom – customs are things we just do because everyone else does, right? Like taking our shoes off at the door, shaking hands when we meet and defending our program even though the critic has a point.
This isn’t just a fun comparison, though. We could use this list. If we really want to address culture, this list is a great place to start. Tom, you create some solutions to improve how we write our documents. Sally, please put together a team to identify and question the customs we’re just doing.
I’d be pretty excited to work in an organization that said, “Culture is necessary for our success. Let’s put our energy into getting it right for the long haul.”
