You know you’re a business anthropologist if…
- You ask at least 500 follow-up questions when your supervisor gives you a project to really understand the full context.
- You have a prepared spiel about how what you studied was different than digging up Mayan artifacts (unless that happened to be what you did).
- You constantly ask people how they feel when completing a task or what they think of the process.
- You try to reimagine and redesign any object or process that your organization will let you get your hands on.
- You have critiqued every organization that has hired you.
- You have the strangest knick-knacks on your desk from around the world.
- You take triple the notes anyone else does in a meeting, recording in detail what everyone’s statements and body postures.
- In regular conversation, you interrogate your colleagues like you’re leading an interview.
- You frequent your company’s “watercooler spots” – informal places to gather to hang out. This is where the real work happens.
- You rage against top-down procedures and formal hierarchy every time you encounter it.
- You have resolved to never use PowerPoint for your presentations.
- Any time you hear a French word, your mind immediately goes to the French theorist with the most similar sounding name.
I intend this as a fun little exercise thinking about the quirks and idiosyncrasies of working as an anthropologist in the business world.
Photo Credit: Toa Heftiba at https://unsplash.com/photos/FV3GConVSss