Thanks to Tony DiBella for his helpful, clear descriptions of anthropology
and applied anthropology.
One of his descriptions, I believe, helps make a point I was trying to
make earlier about the bankruptcy of many anthropological approaches to
working with organizations today:
>Anthropology is the study of cultures (human social systems) - how they
>function (static), and how they have come to be the way they are
>(dynamic/process).
Okay, but even this definition of a "dynamic/process" stops far short of
what we truly need. What we truly need, and what I have had to employ for
over 15 years in helping organizations improve, is a "dynamic/process"
approach to how organizations change. That is, not how they came to be
but how they will come to become; not past oriented, but future oriented.
I confess that I have seldom found it very useful to know how
organizations came to be the way they are when I was trying to help them
become something else. The dynamics that caused today's "problems" is
seldom sufficient to help solve them, and is "out of context" in the sense
that those dynamics occurred in situations far different than the
organization faces now and in the future.
I can subscribe to "learn about the past or we are doomed to repeat it" --
in the sense that we can learn something about what not to do -- but even
that aphorism, as widely accepted as it may be, fails to capture the whole
truth. Sometimes what organizations may need to do is precisely some of
those things that failed in the past! They failed because they were done
before the organization, or its environment, were ready for them. Or they
failed because they were not well implemented (etc., etc.)
Finally, when dealing with human beings in human (social) organizations,
it is dangerous and ineffective to focus on what has happened when your
goal is to create the future. By this I mean, simply, that as soon as one
begins dredging up "how did we get into this mess?" people forget that the
goal is to create the future and become fixated on deflecting blame; they
become defensive rather than creative; they become upset and divisive
rather than enthused and collaborative.
For all of these reasons, and others, I avoid taking an anthropological
approach to my work, even though for many years I described that work as
"culture change."
--"John Gunkler" <jgunkler@sprintmail.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>