Tag Archives: power

Ethnographers vs. Moderators: Know What You Are Buying

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The other day I was speaking with someone about ethnography and was informed by the person in question that she too was a “moderator.” She, of course, practiced ethnography, such as it is, and informed me she had been “moderating ethnographies” for years.  Yes, it made my skin crawl. Not because someone was crossing disciplinary boundaries, but because the choice of words told that ethnography was indeed the last thing she practiced, but had no doubt sold her self-defined ethnographic prowess into many a company. And unfortunately, this is precisely what continues to water down and cheapen the methodology and its use in business settings.

Let me state that I am not a moderator, I am an ethnographer and an anthropologist. And while both moderators and ethnographers speak to people, they are hardly one and the same.  On the surface it no doubt seems like I’m splitting hairs, but this isn’t just a simple matter of differing opinions or semantic variation, it is at the heart of how practitioners execute their work and how they practice ethnography.

A moderator is defined as a presenter, or host.  A moderator is a person or organization responsible for running an event.  A moderator is a person given special powers to enforce the rules of a collective event, be it a focus group, a forum, a blog, etc.  Moderation is the process of eliminating or lessening extremes. It is used to ensure normality throughout the medium on which it is being conducted. In other words, moderators assume control and direct. They maintain power and tease out information that is essentially qualitative hypothesis testing. Understand, I have no problem with moderation and moderators, but the practice of moderation is anything but ethnographic.

Ethnography is a qualitative research method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group.  Data collection methods are meant to capture the social meanings and ordinary activities of people in naturally occurring settings that are commonly referred to as “the field.” The goal is to collect data in such a way that the researcher does not impose any of their own bias on the data. Multiple methods of data collection may be employed to facilitate a relationship that allows for a more personal and in-depth portrait of the informants and their community. These can include participant observation, field notes, interviews, and surveys.  In order to accomplish a neutral observation a great deal of reflexivity on the part of the researcher is required. Reflexivity asks us to explore the ways in which a researcher’s involvement with a particular study influences, acts upon and informs such research.  The goal is to minimize the power structure and allow people, our participants, to inform and guide the researcher according to what matters most to them, be it spoken or unspoken. In other words, we are not moderating, we are learning and exploring.

So why does any of this matter? It matters because when a client chooses to do ethnographic research, they need to know that they are getting what they paid for – people who understand the theoretical models governing cultural behavior and the training to tease out information and opportunities that traditional methods do not yield.  Ethnography’s strength comes from the ability to work fluidly with participants as opposed to moderating a setting or social interaction. The researcher who refers to him or herself as a moderator of ethnography, through his or her choice of words, is indicating how they will do fieldwork, how they will interpret findings and how they subconsciously see their role in the field. And again, while there is nothing wrong with “moderating”, selling it as ethnography or assuming that the word “moderator” is synonymous with “ethnographer” is like saying that because I can do basic money management I can now call myself an accountant. Or because I own a copy of The Lotus Sutra I am an expert in Buddhism. Or because I can change my oil I am a mechanic.  You get the point.  Not only is it a disservice to the discipline, it is a disservice to the client.

Simply put, if you’re going to hire an ethnographer, it isn’t enough to ask what markets they will work in or how big the sample population will be. If you’re going to spend the money, the time and the effort ask the obvious question: “What do you call yourself.” Then get them to articulate not only their methods, but the rationale behind them. It’s your money. Be sure you are paying for what you have commissioned.

Purpose, Power, Politics: Barriers to Creative Organizations

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Creativity and innovation are always in demand.  Well, to be more accurate, lip service to the ideas of wanting creativity and innovation are always in demand.  The reality is often far different. Most of us recognize the necessity of creative processes at work, regardless of whether we’re taking about strategic planning, insights development, product design. We, as individuals at least, recognize creative thinking as central to generating new ideas and innovation that in turn lead to greater brand recognition and profits.  We know all this and yet creativity is something that often dies before it can get a foothold.  That begs the question, if creativity is so valuable to an organization, why does he corporate culture regularly frown upon the very pursuits that lead to ground breaking innovation? Why do companies so often suppress creativity, both tacitly or overtly? While there is no doubt room for as many opinions as people, I think it largely comes down to three primary elements: Purpose, Power, and Politics.

Purpose:

Companies hire people tasked with strategic thinking and innovation that they think are smart, inventive and inclined to explore their world. They hire people who tend not to think in terms of perpetuating the status quo or who are inclined to think in a linear fashion.  They hire people who can think in ways others overlook.  While those people are intriguing and exciting during the interview and indeed the first few months of joining the corporate team, they are also disinclined to conform to the standard practices of the organization. They do not sit typing at their desks, revisiting the same spreadsheets endlessly or thinking about to shave 10 cents off the production price of some widget the company makes.  They are the people who find new product ideas while visiting the museum, create new strategies while shopping for organic dog food with people and draw insights that can be applied to messaging through reading a Victor Turner. Unfortunately, these sorts of activities run counter to what many business people believe when observing or talking to these sorts of folks. If the activity can’t be readily quantified or tied to a specific project of the moment, it is a waste of time. If it takes cerebral effort and any degree of time, then the employee isn’t worth the expense. What this boils down to is the idea that if creative thinkers don’t conform to the expected, day-to-day behavior of the organization, they are devalued and ultimately punished, even though it was their non-traditional methods that got them hired in the first place.

Punishment for thinking, learning and doing is the driving force. Curiosity fuels every great innovation, but this is easily forgotten. Innovative thinkers don’t simply solve problems. They are engaged in a process of discovery that is its own reward. If that way of thinking is thought of on an organizational level as something superfluous, then creativity and innovation die. These people have a quality that allows them to identify significant opportunities and to find creative solutions rather than simplistic ones.  If they aren’t rewarded or if they are devalued, they leave. And the organization loses out.

Power:

With power comes, many times, a decline in the ability to step outside your own way of looking at the world and embrace new ideas. While leadership leads to a unified vision and direction for the company, power often also distorts reality. Many leaders come from a traditional system that rewards organizations producing regular, predictable outcomes and profits.  There is a singular focus on how things should be done and a lack of flexibility, both in terms of thinking and control.  Encouraging more creativity means letting go of control and questioning the status quo.  This has two results. First, it means that uncertainty is now part of the business equation.  Business people are typically trained to avoid risk. Creative thinking means embracing a greater degree of uncertainty.  And this goes beyond direct business concerns, it goes to the heart of identity.

Embracing the way creative types think, learn and act often means relinquishing a degree over people. Power can be defined in many ways. Most simply, it is the ability to get what you want.  But what is it people want? Often it is greater power and recognition by the organization of their indispensability. Control leads to greater value and an increase sense of self-worth. Often, embracing creative thinking is interpreted by members of leadership as relinquishing control and opening oneself to personal and professional risk. The result is that creativity is subject to conflicts from the highest levels of the organization, down to the lowest. Which leads to internal politics.

Politics:

For all practical purposes, organizational politics are essentially an extension of the issue of power, but I separate the topic here simply because it is about those in search of power rather than those who have it. Creative thinking means being wiling to think about the big picture, to embrace the whole rather than the parts. Unfortunately, that means people are asked to do things in ways they haven’t before, thus challenging not only their worldview, but also their place in the pecking order – or so they often believe. Once a happy rut has been established, it is difficult to get out of it. We are encouraged by the system to stay within the confines of these ruts, receive our paychecks and maintain the status quo. We guard our kingdoms jealously, even as our borders slowly crumble around us. Consequently, innovation and creativity become subject to internal jockeying and stale thinking.

So What?

So what can be done to foster creativity in an organization? What needs to change? First, reward people for doing things differently and providing new, creative ideas. Encourage teams and individuals to experiment with new ways of learning. Encourage engineers and designers to spend a day at the natural history museum. Promote reading books other than the latest business book – poetry, science, anthropology philosophy, whatever gets the mind running at top speed and in new directions. In other words, give people license to think and act in creative ways rather than tying them to the same chain of behavior they have been tied to in the past.

Second, there needs to be more than temporary excitement at the top. There needs to be long-term, clear, open support by leadership and management at all levels.  It has to be sustained and encouraged throughout the organization. If leadership does not loudly promote its commitment to creative thinking, it will die on the vine.

Ultimately, talking about being a creative organization and actually performing as a creative organization are very different things.

The Grab for Power

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The other day Warren Buffett wrote “OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.”  The rest of the NY Times Op-Ed piece goes on to explain why he and people like him won’t stop investing, either in people or the market, because we close tax loopholes.  I won’t belabor the points here – Mr. Buffett did a wonderful job pointing out the logical fallacies of the post-tea party Republican party.  But for what is a decidedly well thought out expose of the economic fallacies of the far right, the deeper issue really has precious little to do with the outcomes of taxing the .5 percent a little bit more.  They are well aware that 99.5 percent of taxpayers will be unaffected by any policy changes.  This isn’t about improving the economy at all.  It’s about manipulation and power.

Power can be defined in many ways. Most simply, it is the ability to get what you want, or as scholar Kenneth Boulding said, power is “the ability to change the future.”  Boulding said power has three forms: threat, exchange, and love. Threat power is equivalent to “power over.” Exchange power is the power of negotiation, as it requires another party to negotiate with. Love, Boulding argued, is also a form of power. Although not often recognized as power, when people love each other, they do things to help the other person, just because they love them, not for any particular reward or hope of exchange. This gives rise to what Boulding calls “the integrative system,” the structure of bonds, of respect, of legitimacy that holds social groups and whole societies together. This is the form of power that underlies persuasion. People can be persuaded to change their behavior if a convincing argument can be made that corresponds with an opponent’s belief system (or changes that belief system through love or respect). And while there is certainly room to argue details and split hairs, Boulding’s construct is simple and helps illustrate a point.  When arguments from the far right don’t stand up to scrutiny and are still backed by their supports and demagogues (often with more and more outlandish rhetoric), then there must be some motive other than a desire to help God and Country.

Breaking the back of the economy is one sure way to do it, provided you can muster enough brown shirts early on.  When you strip a population of everything and then offer it a bowl of rice, the people are likely to be disproportionately grateful for whatever they get or willing to keep their heads down out of fear of retribution.  And just as the Nazis took advantage of derelicts, psychopaths and the general deranged by placing them in positions of controlled power, creating a kind of perverse hierarchy based on depravity, so to do Tea Party advocates seek to elevate the dregs in order to beat the masses into submission.  Time is the stumbling block, but even that can be overcome.  Step one on the road to creating a society defined by fear begins with shifting the power structure to do away with exchange.

It begins with the simple dismissal of the comments of Mr. Buffett and his cohort. Because the goal is not to actually worry about job creation, rather it is to strip people of a voice, no matter if they are at the top or the bottom of the economic hierarchy. Paint him as being on the fringe, along with other extremely bright, innovative, entrepreneurial folks, and you can continue to grow the level of fear people feel about the economy and their neighbor, thereby doing away with discourse.  The result is that the people consolidating power continue to spread division, which in turn leads to greater reliance on them.  One segment of the population comes to look on the leaders of the far right as saviors, the rest look on in fear but keep their mouths shut.

Of course, they know they have no argument.  When Michelle Bachmann simply scoffs at the man, dismissing him as an unbeliever she knows precisely what she is doing. The base of zealots is already in place.  When Rick Santorum says it’s a plot hatched by homosexuals, he is simply giving people in a growing state of fear something to attack. When Rick Perry says that he doesn’t care what one of the wealthiest men in America says because his own economic policy is guided by God, he does so because he knows that when power is finally consolidated into the hands of a few, he will be able to turn that man – long dead at that point – into a myth of his own devising, a myth that validates the Tea Party agenda.

Because it’s not about freedom, economic or personal.  It’s about establishing the belief that 2+2 = 5. It’s about getting the masses to agree that power and wealth is indeed better off in the hands of a tiny minority.  It is about fear and control, plain and simple.  That Mr. Buffett is right when he lays out his economic argument means nothing.  The goal isn’t about improving the economy.  It never was.

 

 

Exquisite Corpse: A Surrealist Approach to Business

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A friend sent me an email about an AAF event he attended the other night featuring Brian Collins and Leland Maschmeyer, partners at Collins: http://www.collins1.com/. They presented an experiential design concept they call Brand Commons. Basically it is the idea of the controlled release of a brand or campaign to the consumer with the purpose of interaction, similar to surrealism experiments called Exquisite Corpse – each person adding surprising content to create a work of art, or in Collins clients’ cases, a brand experience. Nothing necessarily new, but packaged well with guidelines on how to view brands and consumers.

He went on to describe their vision this way. Their perceived evolution of business from Traditional Commercial Activity to Brand Commons Commercial Activity runs like this:
1. Consumers -> Peers
2. Amassing Power -> Giving Strength
3. Control -> Surprise
4. Monologue -> Dialogue
5. Engage -> Involve

And they identified 6 elements to consider when designing an experiential solution:
1. A defined space for people to share
2. A goal that motivates people to participate
3. Simple rules for participants to follow in pursuit of that goal
4. A way for participants to communicate
5. Tools for participants to act creatively and autonomously
6. Feedback that motivates participants to amplify, mitigate or change certain behaviors.

Interestingly, the idea of a changing marketplace defined in large part through the abandonment of the transactional, one-way exchange for a dialog where power and structure are a shared enterprise between the brand and it’s range of constituents (from buyer to designer to institution) is an idea to which many an anthropologist would subscribe. Needless to say, I love the ideas being presented. For those interested in turning cultural insights into something meaningful, this is an interesting place to start.

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