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“These People Ask Questions for a Living”

Think ethnographers only ask questions in the field? No. It’s a way of life for them…

Every once in a while I get an unexpected glimpse into how others see ethnographic thinking and what makes it so valuable. This is a story about one of those moments.

I was conducting fieldwork in Los Angeles with a team of two other anthropologists, and we were on a break between field visits. The three of us decided to have lunch with a mutual friend at a local restaurant. As we settled in with our drinks, the waiter came back to socialize before taking our order and asked us how our day was going. One of our team members mentioned “fieldwork” in the course of conversation to which the waiter responded, “What do you mean?” My colleague added, “We’re anthropologists.” The waiter, confused, said, “Like digging up bones?” To which our friend responded, “No, not that kind of anthropologists. They’re cultural anthropologists. These people ask questions for a living.”

Years later, the way our friend described what we do continues to resonate with me. Much of the value ethnographic thinking offers boils down to asking skillfully crafted questions in one form or another. Of course, the aim and purpose of those inquiries can vary widely, but overall it is this ongoing curiosity—often about matters that are seemingly commonplace to others—that generates the data needed to develop insights that connect individual behaviors to broader cultural phenomena.

In applied settings, these questions help bring the voice of the customer to an organization, of course. Much of this value is rooted in the ways ethnographers continually navigate between insider and outsider status in their work. This allows them to empathize with many different people while their analytical detachment provides broader perspective. And, because they’re always focused on both cultural context and deep understanding, they’re able to identify the meaning and importance that interactions embedded within social systems have on people’s lives.

Just as importantly, ethnographic thinking also raises questions that frame an organization’s challenges in cultural terms by offering alternative lenses, and cross-pollinating perspectives between differing views. For example, at a macro level, the questions ethnographers ask can help organizations understand how flows between cultures (customer cultures, company/organizational cultures, stakeholder cultures, and influencer cultures, etc.) interact to inform how their offerings are perceived. Answers to these questions allow organizations to step outside their internal assumptions and see themselves in cultural contexts so that they can craft strategies adapted to the ‘real-world’ cultural dynamics that influence their market.

These modes of inquiry that ethnographers bring to their work are so deeply embedded in their thinking you could argue that they might exist on some subconscious level—it simply becomes part of how they think about the world. They’re always asking why, always probing to understand dynamics and interactions, and the value they produce nearly always expands the scope of the original brief. Returning to the story of our friend who so eloquently described the ethnographic mindset, I think I would only edit one part of her description, by re-phrasing it to: “These people also ask questions as a way of living.”

Unconventional Tool Series: Picnic Tables

Are you testing the boundaries of your practice? What are you missing if you don’t?

In Chapter One of Ethnographic Thinking, I highlight the many benefits of cultivating curiosity, with a particular emphasis on remaining genuinely curious at all phases of work. While many tools selected for a project have the potential to be diverse and creative means of cultivating curiosity, it’s easy to get caught up in a standard set of practices that produce reliable and consistent data. But what dimensions of data (and related insights) are we missing when we constrain ourselves to only familiar methods? What more might we discover by opening up our set of practices to encompass methods that reconfigure what it means to explore and discover, and to experiment with new processes and protocols?

Which brings us to picnic tables. Yes, picnic tables. How so?

I’ve actually done a lot of thinking about picnic tables: their history, wide range of uses, and, most importantly, the kinds of behaviors they facilitate. It may sound odd, but I actually find them quite inspiring. Let me share some reasons why:

  1. They’re everyday objects. No one’s ever surprised or shocked when they see a picnic table. Ubiquitous, practical, and utilitarian—picnic tables get the job done…everyday.
  2. They’re accessible. Take a look around next time you’re in a park. People gravitate toward picnic tables. They’re inviting, unpretentious, and disarming.
  3. They’re transparent. Not in the invisible sense, but in their recognizable disposition. Picnic tables openly display their basic materials and manner of construction, including their flaws and strengths. They’re direct, evident, forthright, and sincere.
  4. They’re versatile. It may take some continued study to notice this one, but picnic tables are constantly re-purposed. I’ve seem them as vehicles, as skateboard ramps, as shelters, as scaffolding, towers, and workbenches. They seem to be OK with this, and offer themselves generously to new purposes.
  5. They’re egalitarian. Ever notice that there’s usually no ‘head of the table’ at a picnic table? Why would there be? That would be far too presumptuous. Picnic tables are inherently egalitarian in their configuration. They’re designed for informal interaction and open communication. Listen closely: kids speak up at a picnic table (unlike some dinner tables). 
  6. They’re vessels for storytelling. More than a place to eat, picnic tables invite people to gather together and share the small things that make a difference in their lives. They’re an easy place to express everything from passion and revelry to the mundane and everyday. Their seats, without backs, invite engagement and make it physically impossible to lean back and judge.
  7. They’re platforms for popular culture. It would be hard to have seen a good number of picnic tables without also noticing that they seem to draw (command?) embellishment from their users. Graffiti, carvings, layers of paint, stain…and yet more graffiti, carvings, and layers of paint and stain. Picnic tables invite people to express themselves, often in simple, clever, timely, and heartfelt ways.
  8. They’re accidental artifacts. Picnic tables accumulate human experiences. Their surfaces retain evidence of events, commemorate relationships, and even record confessions. They’re treasure troves of experiential data.

In short, picnic tables are casual, collaborative, and colloquial in their service as facilitators, documentarians, and artifacts.

So, what role might picnic tables play in cultivating curiosity in a project? For example, how might they be used to work with participants for whom in-home interviews or design exercises simply don’t make sense (e.g., they spend very little time at home, are highly mobile, or perhaps, don’t have permanent housing)? How might picnic tables be used to capture data unique to ‘third spaces’ that aren’t available in homes or workplaces? How might they supplement data in more traditional studies in ways that help stimulate creative thinking during insight development and ideation? How might they be used to help empathize more with participants by understanding the kinds of perspectives they might offer outside the context of direct ethnographic inquiry?

Here’s a thought experiment on how it might look:

Imagine a scenario in which team members strategically place a set of brand new picnic tables at a number of different locations of interest as part of the ‘discovery’ phase of a research project. They then use those picnic tables as meeting points with research participants (to encourage open discussion in ‘neutral’ locations). They might then invite participants to use those same picnic tables for their own meetings, breaks, or general recreation—offering a resource to use as they see fit. Team members might also encourage some participants to document those interactions, conversations, or reflections that occur at the picnic tables—either by capturing audio/video, or by leaving notes or other markings directly on the picnic tables. Over the course of the project, others might join in (including possible friends of the participants or people who just happen to be nearby), each engaging in discussions, and some of whom might be inclined to add inscriptions of their own on the tables. At the end of this phase, team members could return for follow up discussions with participants to review interactions that occurred at the tables, as well as capture the inscriptions left on the tables themselves for interpretation and analysis. What symbols and inscriptions were left? What meanings are embedded within them? What relationship do they have to the project and its focus? What do they say about the people who left them? How do they differ from table to table, and why?

Of course, there would be many details to work out in order to ensure that this experiment produced useful data; and, some projects would obviously be better candidates for this approach than others. The idea, however, is to spark curiosity about expanding methods and the type and range of data or artifacts we include in our work—regardless of what type of work it is. How can we be genuinely curious about our approach, and be equally curious about the diverse range of data we might collect to both inform and push the boundaries of the insights we eventually form?

 

Curioser and Curioser

What’s the cumulative value of curiosity?

When I was an undergraduate student, a small group of friends and I invented a game we called “Go.” Not the board game Go, this was something much more experiential. The rules were simple:

  1. Everyone playing (4-6 players seems to work best) agrees to clear their day of all other responsibilities (not a difficult task for many undergrads who can creatively juggle a schedule).
  2. The first player looks around the immediate environment (in any direction, as far or near as the eye could see), and identifies a given location within sight to all to which the entire group must navigate together…no matter what.
  3. Repeat step 2, rotating turns among all players until everyone has had at least one turn to selection a destination.

No one really ever won at Go, but it did require significant strategic thinking when it was your turn to decide where to take the group next. What place should you choose? Will it be the church steeple on the top of the hill that’s who knows how many miles away? Or will it be the convenience store across the street? How much should you (could you) ask of your fellow players? How challenging do you want to be with your selection? What kind of pace do you want to set for the game? If you choose a distant destination, are you making the choice to claim a significant amount of the team’s time and energy to reach it? Conversely, if you choose a sofa across the room, what kind of tone and experience are you setting for your fellow players?

One of the most interesting parts of the game for me was the anticipation we all experienced when we reached a location selected by a team member, and were waiting for the next player to decide where we would go next. We would all look around, entertain the range of possibilities, and then begin to calculate the consequences of reaching different destinations—every location presented a very different set of potential experiences. And, as the current player contemplated their choice, the other players began to speculate about how that choice would be conditioned by their individual preferences, disposition, or even their mood. Some players gradually developed different styles that created even more anticipation, triggering questions like: Will the “long haul” player chose a location that takes hours to reach again? Or will s/he make a more accessible choice and open the experience for others to shape? What kinds of navigation challenges will we encounter for each possible location choice? What interactions with different neighborhoods and people might ensue? What barriers might exist for gaining access to a chosen destination once we reach it?

However, once the player made a choice it was refreshing to surrender ourselves to the journey and shift to collaborative mode as we collectively determined how we were going to reach our new destination. We learned  very quickly that it was useful to have cash on hand, and that comfortable shoes and the right clothing were essential. But more importantly, we learned a great deal about the intricacies of many different cultural landscapes and geographies of Pittsburgh. The game took us to the tops of countless buildings, vending machine ‘kitchens’ deep in the bowels of administrative buildings, posh tree-lined shopping districts, blocks of boarded up townhouses, along railroad tracks, and under many bridges.

Over time, and after many games of Go, our curiosity for exploring Pittsburgh’s landscape began to culminate into a body of knowledge about the city that went beyond cursory knowledge of bus schedules or restaurant locations. We developed a genuine understanding of how different neighborhoods felt, the ways that interactions on the street differed in each, the desolate places where the forgotten went to hide, and the decorated places where people went to be seen. We also learned what it took to navigate these different environs; to know when and from whom we might seek assistance, or when it was more productive to move ahead on our own. In short, we had amassed a cumulative, collective, street-level knowledge-base of the city.

Only later in graduate school did I begin to explore psycho-geography, Guy DeBord’s concept of the derivé, and the works of phenomenologists like Gaston Bachelard. As I devoured each book (and created some early visual experiments to process what I was learning), I was often reminded of our game Go, and how our random explorations opened up our understandings of Pittsburgh’s cultural landscapes in ways we would never have discovered without the curious drive that lead us there.

Today, as I explore the broader benefits of ethnographic thinking, I see some distinct parallels with our game of Go. What stands out most is that, like Go, ongoing, genuine curiosity about the world around you is a core disposition of ethnographic thinking that exposes its ‘players’ to a much broader range of perspectives and interactions that allow them to see the world through many different lenses. And those different lenses accrue in the mind (and within teams or organizations) over time. What’s more, even if experiences from different domains aren’t clearly related at first, knowledge gained from curiosity within each builds, and eventually provides a growing set of references (and interpretations) that can be accessed and cross-referenced in other settings and challenges.

The result is that ongoing genuine curiosity, and the knowledge that accumulates from it, can inspire entirely new approaches to initiatives that are completely unrelated to their original objectives. This kind of creativity is possible because curious minds cross-pollinate ideas between different areas of exploration and observation. But they’re only possible when teams can reference a broad and growing ‘catalog’ of experiences that trigger those unique (and sometimes unexpected) cross-references that lead to unique and creative new ideas. Remaining continually open, receptive, and curious is the key. This means going beyond the immediate focus of a project, and integrating ethnographic curiosity as a fundamental way that teams interact with the world around them.

To follow are a few strategies I’ve found useful for cultivating curiosity:

Stretch beyond the plan

Look for opportunities to go beyond the constraints and objectives of your original plan, whether it be for a project, initiative, or other purpose. Allow yourself to occasionally follow tangents and explore new perspectives to the point where you have a full understanding of their meaning—but not to the extent that you allow yourself to be derailed in ways that shift your focus to an entirely new topic.

Get ‘curiouser’ about underlying meanings

The everyday, commonplace, and familiar are a treasure trove of ethnographic meaning. There are always distinct reasons why routines have become so engrained that they become functionality invisible for their for their practitioners; and those reasons are frequently tied to deeply held values so embedded within daily practices that they’re presumed to be common sense. But dig deeper, and ask the difficult (an naive) questions, and your curiosity will expose much more than what’s initially apparent, and it will help you reframe assumptions in ways you never anticipated. For teams and organizations, this can, and should, be applied in both outward-facing initiatives and internal processes.

Continually expand your pool of perspectives

The more ideas and perspectives you bring into your work (and life), the greater the chances that they will collide or build on one another to inspire new ideas and create new forms of momentum for creativity and problem solving. The key is to remain as continually curious about unexpected connections and other relationships between the ideas you collect as you are about collecting them in the first place.

With these three tactics in play, any organization or team can begin to benefit from the cumulative value of curiosity. Over time, their pool of relevant and innovative ideas will grow from their ever-expanding strategic collection of observations and the ways in which they multiply, compound, interact, and inform one another. They’ll also begin to see more productive relationships with other teams or organizations, because genuine curiosity breaks down silos and triggers empathic connections between those engaged in attempts to understand other ways of seeing the world. Finally, genuinely curious organizations and teams are much more likely to identify opportunities for growth by continually expanding their exposure to a wider range of diverse perspectives. They begin to function as a organism that benefits from this diversity because it represents new pathways and contexts that would otherwise have been missed.

In closing, I’d like to share a recent reflection from Mary Catherine Bateson about her mother’s (Margaret Mead) concept of evolutionary clusters, and the promise they offer for affecting change.

“Major accelerations of change came out when a group of people got together and learned together and dared to think new thoughts and then pass them on. The evolutionary part of that was in the relationships between the members of those small groups, feeding off of each other’s imaginations and insights and wisdom and then spreading them out in the society, going forward.”

More from Mary Catherine Bateson here : Composing a Life

Inverting Empathy

Looking for strategies to gain traction in the workplace? Expand your idea of empathy…

The value of empathy in human centered design is now widely recognized as critical for aligning offerings with customer values, norms, priorities, and practices. Far less common, however, are efforts to extend that same empathy to the people with whom researchers and designers work everyday—the engineers, strategists, marketers, managers, executives, and many others who are critical to the daily functions of an organization. Like customers or constituents, each of these people bring their own lens and set of experiences to an organization’s culture, and each of them has a set of practices, beliefs, values, and worldviews that influence how projects develop—as well as how the organization and it’s culture evolves.

Empathizing with your colleagues in the same way that ethnographers do with research participants in the field might feel a bit counterintuitive at first, but the results of ‘inverting’ empathy in this way are quite tangible. It allows you to identify with their plights, understand their perspectives, and interpret their position within the organization’s culture. In short, you can understand them from a cultural perspective, which allows you to position their needs, emotions, dispositions, and motivations within a holistic framework. From this framework, you can develop strategic communications aligned with their practices, beliefs, values and worldviews in ways that advance both their interests and your own. Eventually, building empathy in this way increases the odds of support and buy-in from colleagues who appreciate your sincere interest in their circumstances and contexts.

So what does this look like in practice? I’ve found that the following strategies, while not exhaustive, are particularly effective:

Read the social cues your colleagues send

The workplace is an ethnographic field site like any other; and the observational data you need to empathize with your colleagues is surrounding you everyday. Shifting your lens from emic (insider) to etic (outsider) in the workplace can provide you with insights you need to better understand your colleagues, and their priorities, values, and worldviews.

While observing, you should be continually on the lookout for cues that will help you paint a fuller picture of the culture you’re exploring. Your aim is to look beyond the obvious and familiar to discover the key components that collectively make up an ‘ecosystem’ of behaviors and interactions. Some of the most common include:

body language, physical interactions, behavioral triggers, contradictions, unspoken priorities, normalized practices, sequences of events, affinities, attachments, repellants, workarounds, social transgressions, implicit hierarchies, priorities, neglected people/places/things, honored people/places/things, displays of comfort (or discomfort), unconscious habits and practices, and interactions with material goods.

These behaviors are made up of both intentional and unintentional expressions that people use to send signals about their current state of mind. Thoughtfully observing them involves continually sorting and prioritizing your observations to determine levels of relevance and the degree to which they begin to form collective patterns. Keep notes and play close attention, and eventually the patterns you identify will help you interpret your observations and develop a much more insightful understanding of cultural contexts that drive the perspectives, motivations, and priorities of your colleagues. Over time, you may also begin to identify broader themes that arise across and between the behavioral patterns you identify—a sort of ‘ecosystem’ of organizational priorities (both explicit and implicit) that will allow you to better understand overarching influences that drive your colleagues’ behaviors.

Adapt (and time) your stories to your colleagues’ needs

Stories participants tell are one of the primary sources of data ethnographers use to interpret cultural meaning as they explore new worlds. Stories set context, indicate values, demonstrate flows of power, and signify intentions—all in a narrative that’s (hopefully) engaging and personal. In short, they ground cultural phenomena in everyday lived experiences.

Stories are also one of the most effective vehicles for ethnographers to convey their findings and insights. Stories help them generate empathy, encourage appreciation for difference, broaden perspectives, and make the unfamiliar familiar. Good ethnographers bring their field experiences to life by ensuring that their stories are directly relevant to the lives of those who are listening.

In Ethnographic Thinking I call this practice “empathic storytelling,” and the core principle is ensuring that your messages are aligned with your colleague’s interests and needs. You should always be asking yourself whether or not your stories matter, and whether or not they’re timed to matter most to the people listening. Sometimes this involves breaking stories down into ‘mini-narratives’ that are timed and dispersed strategically for when you think your listeners are most likely to be receptive. This involves thinking back to the patterns from your observations and looking for key moments in your colleague’s lives to enlist storytelling that facilitates new and relevant understandings for them. Ask yourself, “Is this the time when this colleague is most likely to identify with what I’m saying? Why should they care? What is the likelihood they they’ll become an advocate and share my perspective with others if I tell this story now and in this way?” Of course, to do this, you’ll need to be sure you’re actively reading the social cues around you (see above). Which brings us to…

Usher a process of self-realization

In a well-crafted, well-timed, and skillfully configured story, the listener is invited to imagine a whole other world, and empathize with the particular lived experiences within it. In contrast to pedantic lessons or long morality tales, truly resonant ethnographic narratives are most effective when they’re situational, provisional, contingent, and temporary. Their goal isn’t to persuade others of some universal truth, but to introduce ideas and images that resonate on many levels for their listeners. They may integrate elements of logic, reason, or rationality, but their ultimate strength rests in their imagery, emotion, and personal experiences.

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” —Maya Angelou

So, rather than arguing for (or imposing) a position, you can use empathic storytelling to gradually shift the overall platform of understanding for your colleagues by helping them internalize the feeling behind what you have to say. When timed well, this type of storytelling helps your colleagues integrate new perspectives of their own—to reach their own realizations rooted in stories that tap common human experiences. Since everyone’s interpretations are made up of small moments of realization, using empathic storytelling in this way helps them construct their own realizations with an emotional anchor, which eventually grow to form insights that emerge from within their own thinking and feelings. In short, they end up owning the story (not you). This attention to relevance and small-scale points of emotional relation can prove to be far more relevant, persuasive or convincing than grand narratives or lessons that risk being perceived as dogmatic, pedantic, or moralizing.

Bringing it all Together

Some early anthropologists such as Margaret Mead were keenly aware of the fact that in order to help people see the value of ethnographic insight, they needed to think strategically about how their work would be received among their intended audiences. Mead intentionally embraced ethnographic film in part for the purpose of reaching broader audiences. She also wrote regularly for Redbook magazine, lectured to a wide range of audiences, and made frequent appearances on television talk shows.

In each case, she prioritized her audiences’ interests and situated her content and style of messaging to maximize the potential for impact and adoption of the concepts she wished to convey. She did this first by directing the ethnographic gaze toward those audiences, and then responding in ways she knew they would be most likely to absorb her messages. At her most effective, she also tailored her communications toward institutions that she believed either need to reform their policies or positions, or had the potential to carry on her message and influence others.

Ethnographic thinking is most impactful when it extends empathy not only to those outside an organization but also to those who live within a company’s organizational culture. By facilitating and embodying empathic connections on both sides, it ultimately enables more relevant and meaningful innovation.

 

Book Review: Quantum Negotiation

What do quantum science, negotiation, and ethnographic thinking have in common? More than you might think…

What do quantum science, negotiation, and ethnographic thinking have in common? More than you might think; and certainly more than I anticipated when I picked up this unique work that extends the principles of quantum science to the practice of negotiation (and beyond). More specifically, the importance of interdependence is positioned at the core of this expertly crafted volume by Walch, Mardyks, and Schmitz in which they provide readers with both practical and strategic advice to help them surpass the limitations of traditional negotiation practices by enlisting a holistic mindset that’s very similar to ethnographic thinking.

From the outset, the authors are careful to point out that “…Quantum Negotiation is less about tactics and technologies, and more about how we show up, the relationship we create, and the energy we direct…” and they establish some key concepts early in the work that drive this point home. Most importantly, they argue that: 

“As an observer of one’s own and others’ emotional, social, physical, and spiritual needs, Quantum Leaders are able to be clear and anchored about their own needs. This anchoring serves as a foundation for buoyant behavior when adapting to uncertain environments and diverse viewpoints.” 

This concept of buoyancy is essential to Quantum Negotiation, and serves as a device for the authors to explore the topic from many different perspectives. They supplement this with candid stories based on questions posed by people who’ve faced real-life negotiation challenges, which are sprinkled throughout the book to help ground the concepts and demonstrate how the principles of Quantum Negotiation can play out in different settings.

On the practical level, the authors provide many tools for re-positioning how readers think about negotiating. From identifying “Zones of Potential Agreement,” to “Developing a Sociocentric Orientation,” to specific advice on how to respond to manipulation tactics, they detail the nuances and interactions that best support implementing a Quantum negotiation approach in ways that are both accessible and rooted in their theoretical premise. Two notable sections that serve this purpose include a chapter dedicated entirely to Quantum Negotiation tools, and another (in some ways more useful) set of Quantum Negotiation Assessments that help negotiators approach the process with counterparts in ways that prioritize building awareness around a set of continuums, such as task orientation versus relationship orientation, big picture orientation versus detail orientation, and a range of many others.

Beyond tools and assessment frameworks, however, I personally found sections focusing on facilitation, and the role of Quantum Negotiation in leadership, to be especially engaging. For the former, the authors approach to setting tone and reaching mutual understandings are very much like many of the skills that ethnographers use in their work to achieve similar goals. What the authors call “social intelligence” and its requisite efforts to “make others feel valued, respected, affirmed, encouraged, and competent” runs parallel to how ethnographers build rapport with their research participants in order to negotiate the process of collecting field data within a set of interactions that are inherently interdependent. Likewise, their calls for demonstrating vulnerability in the negotiation process in order to humanize the situation and invite a similarly candid approach from counterparts, is a critical component for conducting effective ethnographic research.

Another contribution that many readers might not expect from this work is the remarkably skillful way in which the authors demonstrate how Quantum Negotiation is a valuable and effective leadership asset. They argue that “[l]eaders are negotiating whenever there is something that they need from someone else,” and that whether they acknowledge it or not, “[l]eaders engage in implicit negotiation on a daily basis.” From here, the authors then outline a leadership approach that’s focused on practicing “the art of getting what they need while inspiring and accelerating the capacity for others to do the same.” Among the most valuable suggestions they have is the practice of widening observation skills so that leaders can go beyond tools like scenario planning and performance metrics, to expand their perspectives and take a more holistic approach. Among other things, they recommend that leaders track continuous change outside their organizations to “…tap into diverse networks both within and outside the organization across multiple boundaries,” and “…see disruptive forces before it’s too late.” This requires a holistic approach paired with what the authors call mindfulness that together give leaders the “…mental agility, emotional regulation, attention, and situational awareness,” to achieve the buoyancy they need to manage teams effectively.

You can buy the book here:

Re-situating Intuition

Struggling with leadership who claims they “just know?” There’s another way…

I’ve always found that opening up the innovation process to clients (or internal stakeholders) is essential for helping them understand how teams get from field to insights to prototypes, and to build buy-in along the way. So it was a bit surprising that after more than a year of working with a client on a range of different projects, our main point of contact (a VP at the client company) suddenly took us up on our open offer and asked if he could tag along with our team. We had already invited many members of his team to join us in various phases of our work with positive results, but he said his request was motivated by the fact that he was unable (after all this time) to see how we developed our insights and wanted to learn more. Welcome to the team, Mr. Client.

We included him in the full spectrum of a complex healthcare project, so that he could experience everything from project planning to field research, data downloads, pattern identification, theme creation, insight development, recommendations, and prototyping. Along the way, we were careful to encourage questions, and to demonstrate how we substantiated our insights through this process, and informed it through integration of anthropological theory. While he understood the premise behind our methods and approach, much of the process was a struggle for him. From his perspective, it was difficult to understand why the team needed to “go through all of this” to reach an understanding of how and why people behaved the way they did. After all, he’d been trained as a physician. For him, his “intuition” about patients’ needs and motivations was easier and faster, even if it might miss the nuances. At the end of the project, he seemed to emerge with a greater appreciation for how we worked, but it often remained difficult for him parse out the difference between his ‘intuited’ assumptions and substantiated insights reached through ethnographic analysis and interpretation.

This example is one with a relatively positive outcome. Eventually, our client was able to make this distinction. In some workplaces it’s not uncommon for decisions to be made that are regularly laden with assumptions based on “intuition.” Statements such as “I just know what our customers want,” or “My wife/husband loves it,” are sometimes all that’s needed to set strategies and determine work streams, especially when they’re delivered as a decry from leaders within hierarchical organizations. Throughout my experience working with many different clients, I’ve experimented with a range of different responses to ‘intuitive’ decision making and it’s underlying assumptions. What follows are some of the approaches I’ve taken as well as some context for understanding how leaders gravitate toward ‘intuitive’ decision making.

Yes, you have cultural insights, but…

First, it’s important to recognize that when ‘intuition’ and ethnographic thinking collide, the latter can disrupt sometimes long held assumptions people have about their own culture, sense of expertise, or even their identity. They may see ethnographic interpretations as challenging or devaluing their worldview and what is obvious (to them) about a culture or group of people with which they have familiarity. This can be overcome if ethnographers carefully contrast ‘intuition’ and ethnographic thinking in three important ways: sampling, method, and analysis.

For sampling, I’ve found it useful to begin by validating the legitimacy of perspectives that come from direct involvement in a culture. Let them know that personal experiences are useful for a particular kind of understanding of the interactions at play within their own culture. After all, ethnographers rely heavily on participatory observation as a method, and there are even anthropologists who study their own culture.

However, the trouble comes when experiences outside of systematic research are used to form a position or defend a decision. That’s because intuited arguments often falsely present accounts of personal experiences as empirical when they’re inherently singular reactions to relatively random or highly personal observations or interactions. Repeated often enough, presenting personal experiences in this way can become so deeply engrained in the mind that they are presumed to be factual and naturally self-evident representations of a culture (what we might call stereotypes). Worse yet, intuited arguments frequently slide into confirmation bias, in which all future observations are selected (either consciously or subconsciously) with the purpose of substantiating the original argument.

When ethnographers select a sample for their research, they do so much more purposefully and systematically. Rather than tapping a single set of un-targeted personal experiences, they interact with a diverse array of carefully selected research participants who are native to a culture to understand as wide a range of experiences as possible from each perspective. Which brings us to method.

HOW you observe and collect behavioral data is as important as WHAT you observe and collect.

Unlike singular, random observations, ethnographers intentionally focus their observations and interactions with these participants on a topic or general area of investigation, based on the objectives they outline in their research plan. They collect all the data they can related to a research topic, without regard for whether or not it supports, contradicts, or even seem relevant at all, to any pre-conceived arguments or hypotheses from others. This allows them to identify unstated norms, shared values, and other interpretations of the collective ways people within a culture interact and understand themselves and each other. These are precisely the kinds of ‘nuances’ that make a difference in truly human-centered innovation work.

Getting from observations to insights requires a systematic process of value-neutral interpretations.

Finally, we reach the topic of analysis. Intuited knowledge often relies on the unsubstantiated and de-contextualized opinions of one person to form a point of view. As such, judgment (or at least singularly formed knowledge) is central to how intuitive insights are formed. In contrast, ethnographic insights are built on a systematic process of value-neutral interpretations to discover the collective meaning behind observed patterns in behaviors, interactions, and perspectives among a diverse range of research participants. They’re developed by explicitly deferring judgment throughout a systematic process of data interpretation to reach fully-substantiated (and trace-able) insights.

Are you really prepared to bank on gut instinct?

Having made these distinctions in sampling, method and analysis, a second challenge often arises: helping people integrate new observations they encounter over the course of a project. Here, the goal is not to simply contrast intuition with ethnography, but to bring co-workers or colleagues into the fold of the ethnographic process itself. To do this, ethnographers need to provide an incentive beyond the methodological advantages of ethnographic thinking. They need to position deferring judgment, value neutrality, systematic investigation, and testing interpretations against established models and theories of culture, as clauses in an insurance policy for the kinds of high stakes investments it takes to develop and market a product, system, program, or service. While assertions rooted in intuitive knowledge may be faster and easier, they represent only one data point—a data point that’s doubly biased since it is valid for only one individual, and is brought to the decision making process through the lens of an insider who is more than likely positioning their observation as evidence to support the success of an initiative they wish to succeed. Intuitive decision making in these cases can be a form of judgment that masquerades as ‘obvious fact’ in ways that dramatically escalate risk for the organization and everyone in it.

By shifting the focus toward ethnographic thinking, ethnographers can help decision makers put their intuition on hold so the organization can benefit from a broader and more carefully considered approach to constituent/customer behavior. In this way, the organization’s exposure to risk is reduced by ensuring that a targeted range of diverse perspectives is systematically and strategically vetted and analyzed to provide substantiated insights that can more fully inform decision making. In addition to risk abatement, this shift from intuitive assertion to ethnographic thinking lays the groundwork for design constraints that guide culturally-attuned (human-centered in the current parlance) ideation and iterative prototyping. Furthermore, the ethnographic approach sets the stage for much more informed quantitative inquiries that can be structured to assess scale in ways that align with the logics, contexts, experiences, and behaviors of the customers’ or constituents’ daily lives.

Welcome

to The Ethnographic Mind

Hello and welcome to “The Ethnographic Mind.” I’m launching this blog to explore the many ways that ethnographic thinking — the thought processes and patterns ethnographers develop through their work —  can be applied and appreciated.

Each post will explore the distinct value ethnographic thinking adds to a wide array of processes, strategies, and approaches, including its unique ability to broaden perspectives, reframe challenges, cross-pollinate ideas between differing viewpoints, and change the way people think about themselves and others.

I’m looking forward to hosting this journey, making both discoveries and mistakes, and learning from readers.

— Jay Hasbrouck, Seattle, 2018