In this episode, we are joined by author and journalist, Gillian Tett, to discuss the role anthropology plays in today’s business world. Gillian is the author of the award-winning book, Fool’s Gold, which analyses the origin of the 2008 financial crisis, and more recently, The Silo Effect, and is currently a columnist and US Managing Editor of The Financial Times.
What Was Covered
- Why more and more companies today are turning to anthropologists for insight into employee and consumer culture.
- What executives can do to prevent silos from developing within their organizations.
- How anthropology and cultural awareness can help us to understand and predict the future of the digital and technology economy.
Key Takeaways and Learnings
- Social silences: why we should pay more attention to what we’re not talking about.
- Insider-outsider perspective: how empathizing and contextualizing can help executives to analyze their own company cultures and structures.
- Slack: why the freedom to collide with the unexpected can lead to innovation.
Links and Resources Mentioned in this Episode
- Get in touch with Gillian via Twitter or email
- Financial Times, website
- Saving the Sun, a book by Gillian Tett
- Fool’s Gold: The Inside Story of J.P. Morgan and How Wall St. Greed Corrupted Its Bold Dream and Created a Financial Catastrophe, a book by Gillian Tett
- The Silo Effect, a book by Gillian Tett
- Jamie Dimon’s ‘listening’ bus? Get on board, an article by Gillian Tett