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Leaders Who Become Organization Anthropologists

Dave Ulrich

Dave Ulrich is the Rensis Likert Professor of Business at the Ross School, University of Michigan, and a partner at the RBL Group (www.rbl.net). He has published over 30 books and 200 articles/chapters that have shaped the fields of leadership to deliver results, of organizations to build capabilities, and of human resources to create value where he is the known as the “father of modern HR.” He has been named a top management thought leader in Businessweek, Fortune, Financial Times, The Economist, and People Management, and is the recipient of many awards, including a Lifetime Achievement award from ASTD (now ATD). He has consulted and presented in about 90 countries and with over half of the Fortune 200. He has been repeatedly named to the Thinkers50 list of thought leaders and is now in Thinkers50 Hall of Fame.

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Decades ago when I took my first OB course, I called my parents and told them I was shifting from studying law to studying OB. They thought I would become a doctor, but then asked, “What is OB?” I could not fully explain, but my psychologist wife realized I had OCD, or organization compulsive disorder. I started to observe organizations, from restaurants where we ate to stores where we shopped to athletic teams where I played to churches where I worshipped and so forth.

My organization passion led to a PhD and dozens of major research projects where we have theorized, collected data, analyzed results, and offered advice on organizational practices.

But in the process of studying organizations, I have realized that much of the organizational phenomena I care about are not in spreadsheets or open to statistical analyses. Much of what I learn about organizations comes from careful observation. My experience is confirmed in conversations with Professor Wayne Brockbank,1 a thought leader in how organizations access and use information. He has reported that only 20% of information is structured and embedded in traditional numbers that are susceptible to spreadsheets and statistics. But 80% of information – that which comes from day-to-day living, experience, and observation – is unstructured and not easily quantifiable.

Quantitative data (the 20%) identifies themes and offers empirical insights and should be supplemented with qualitative data (80%), which works with observation, discontinuities, and requires judgment.

Leaders and human resources (HR) professionals who I counsel must recognize and use structured data, and most of them have acquired these skills. The most successful leaders and HR professionals appreciate and rely even more on unstructured data. In Peter Drucker’s terms, they look out the window at that which is visible, but not often seen. I call them organization anthropologists, who seek ambiguity and are constantly exploring questions that are not yet or not easily answered. What do these leaders do that makes them effective organization anthropologists?

Listen for Things That Seem Counterintuitive

I interviewed a new head of HR who came from outside HR. He discovered that his professionals were superb at managing talent: bringing good people into the organization and moving them through. But he said that the organization was facing major strategic changes and that the real problem was finding the right people for the future and then creating a culture where they did their best. After our discussion, we found that his department’s talent practices were 70% to 80% up the S-curve of effectiveness, but the organization’s culture practices were only 20% up the curve. This experience (and others) has led me to exploring culture as an organization capability.

We found in our market valuation studies that two firms in the same industry with the same earnings might have up to a 40% difference in market value.2 At first, this did not make sense, so we explored more and discovered both intangibles and then the leadership capital index.

In both of these cases, I was listening to things that were a bit different and even counterintuitive.

Leaders generally are in positions of influence because of what they know. With their accepted knowledge, they should be very attuned to questions or experiences that challenge them or give them new insights. In one company, a leader recognized that the innovation and culture in emerging markets was much higher than in his home country. He started to create an organization learning model to move knowledge from new to old markets more than in the reverse direction.

Leaders sometimes hide behind titles, offices, and roles. Leaders in organization anthropology spend time outside their comfort zone.

Surround Yourself with People Who See Things Differently

Insecure leaders often surround themselves with people who think like them but may not be quite as good as them. By doing so, they boost their own self-image through knowing more than others and receiving approval for their insights. Effective leaders, on the other hand, spend time with people who are different and who offer new and challenging ideas.

In my career, I have formed partnerships with remarkable colleagues whose ideas complemented mine. I have coauthored all but 2 of the 30-plus books I have written, with the goal of learning from my coauthors. When doing my PhD, I formed a partnership (called applied quantitative research) with a statistician colleague who could perform the right data analysis. I learned from Roger Bolus how to access and manipulate data. I continued to learn about finance by working with a finance professor (Ray Reilly) at Michigan who taught me to turn data into managerial insight. I partnered with C.K. Prahalad to think about how to help leaders recognize and shape new business realities. Our 20-year business partnership at the RBL group combines my more abstract thinking with Norm Smallwood’s discipline to turn ideas into action.

In consulting, I work at the intersection of HR issues (e.g., talent, leadership, and capability) and marketing to link to customers (Leadership Brand3 and HR from the Outside In4) and investors (The Leadership Capital Index5). Effective leaders have both the self-confidence and the curiosity to surround themselves with people who have new ideas and fresh insights. One of my favorite leadership coaching questions is What do you think?

Experiment – Be Willing to Fail – Learn

I worked in a company where we developed this mantra: Think Big, Test Small, Fail Fast, Learn Always. This company was constantly innovating products, services, business models, and leadership actions. They found that they (and many other companies) were pretty good at thinking big and testing small. They were not as good at failing fast and learning always. When failure was reconceptualized as opportunity, the company began to increase innovation because people were not hiding from mistakes but sharing and learning from them.

As organization anthropologists, leaders are constantly observing what people do, and then testing if these observations are generalizable. Leader–observers recognize that failure is a great opportunity to learn. Leaders celebrate the lessons of success as much as the lessons of failure. Another favorite leadership probe: What did you learn from the last experience that you can adapt going forward?

Leaders who observe see individual actions as a series of experiments. They are donut-hole leaders who don’t control people by telling them what to do, but are open (hole in the donut) to seeing what others are doing and connecting them with one another. One anthropologist leader who traveled would encourage leaders he met in location A to talk to leaders in location B or C who were facing the same problem. Instead of the leader giving solutions, he encouraged others to connect in order to learn from and share with each other.

Another leader who ran a top management annual meeting started to invite 10 innovative (often high-potential) employees who were not in the meeting by title, but by activity. These innovators were identified by the senior leaders’ observations of their new ideas. After one meeting, the top leader decided that, in future meetings, 5 of the 10 invited would have succeeded in their innovation and 5 would have failed, but learned. This leader observed new ideas and propagated those ideas to others through getting people to experience them by attending senior leadership meetings.

Continually Navigate Paradox

In our leadership studies,6 we find that people seek the holy grail of being an effective leader by attempting to find a single underlying factor that will ensure leadership effectiveness. In recent years, leaders have been encouraged to have emotional intelligence, then learning agility, grit, resilience, growth mindset, and perseverance. In our research, navigating paradox has become the next wave in the evolution of leadership effectiveness.

Paradoxes exist when seemingly contradictory activities operate together. When these inherent contradictions work together, success follows. Instead of focusing on either/or, paradoxes emphasize and/also thinking.

In my personal work, I have learned to observe, accept, and navigate paradoxes. I see them as representing the guardrails that guide leadership behaviors. Leaders should be both long- and short-term, top-down and bottom-up, directive and engaging, relishing the past and creating the future, global and local, able to zoom out and zoom in, and so forth.

Paradox navigation requires asking questions more than giving answers, as well as not judging on a single dimension, but rather seeing the combination of ideas.

I encourage leaders as observers to identify paradoxes. As soon as they see a new answer, they must recognize and accept the other guardrail, then think about how to navigate between these guardrails. Such leaders know when to converge and focus and when to diverge and encourage variety. By observing an organization’s predisposition, a leader can encourage the paradox that leads to innovation and success.

Conclusion

Being an organization anthropologist requires a commitment to learning and letting go of relationships and ideas that don’t work. In my teaching work, I find I need to have 20% to 25% new material every two years. This sounds easy, but over the decades is enormously demanding. This requires letting go of ideas I might like and constantly acquiring new stories, creating new tools, and asking new questions. Leaders who constantly unlearn end up learning. My OCD (organization compulsive disorder) has only intensified as I continue to look for things others may not yet see.

Reflection Questions

  1. How would you describe the culture of your organization? Do this from the perspective of an anthropologist discovering a completely new and strange tribe.
  2. How many of your colleagues and the people you lead are different from you? In what ways? Do people who are different challenge or frustrate you?
  3. In what areas have you experimented in the past, and what was the outcome? What lessons did you draw from this experience?
  4. Identify some paradoxes in your organization and how you navigate them as a leader.

Notes