0:00:12.800,0:00:17.840
Hello and welcome to today's Leadership in
Extraordinary Times event from Oxford University's

0:00:17.840,0:00:23.520
Saïd Business School; wherever you are, whatever
time it is for you, thanks for joining us today.

0:00:23.520,0:00:27.680
My name is Peter Tufano, I'm the Dean of the
University of Oxford's Saïd Business School

0:00:27.680,0:00:32.720
and for today host of this episode, which
I'm really excited about because we're thrilled

0:00:32.720,0:00:38.160
to join with Gillian Tett today; Dr Gillian
Tett, who's the chair of the editorial board

0:00:38.160,0:00:43.600
and editor-at-large of the Financial Times, creator
of the phenomenal Moral Money newsletter, and today

0:00:43.600,0:00:50.080
author of her newest book Anthro-Vision.
I'm a died-in-the-wool economist

0:00:50.080,0:00:54.320
and sometimes you see these
in book blurbs but I literally couldn't put

0:00:54.320,0:01:00.080
this book down. I consumed it a day: I started
in the evening and the next morning I finished it.

0:01:00.080,0:01:04.880
it's a clear and compelling and powerful
explanation of the power of anthropological

0:01:04.880,0:01:08.240
thinking and approaches to understanding
business and government and society;

0:01:08.880,0:01:16.000
it even inspired me to search a course catalogue to
find anthropology courses for me to audit. Dr Tett,

0:01:16.000,0:01:20.400
and in this year where people using
their doctor's titles has been contentious,

0:01:20.400,0:01:24.080
who I've never heard use that doctor title
before, has her doctorate from Cambridge;

0:01:24.640,0:01:30.560
she's combined the power of careful listening and
superb communication and writing skills to make

0:01:30.560,0:01:35.600
her readers better informed and more alert to the
world around them, and in one final tribute before

0:01:35.600,0:01:40.240
we begin begin, I mentioned to one of my junior
colleagues that I would have the privilege of

0:01:40.240,0:01:45.120
interviewing Gillian today and she wrote me
an email right back - I'll quote from the email -

0:01:45.120,0:01:50.880
'I met Gillian in 2008 in Montreal where she was
the keynote speaker for the economic anthropology

0:01:50.880,0:01:56.800
subfield meeting of the American Anthropological
Association's annual meeting' - that's a mouthful -

0:01:58.000,0:02:02.400
'she was incredibly generous with her time and
humble, I remember those qualities to the day'

0:02:03.120,0:02:10.080
and if that's true 13 years ago 
not only is she a great thinker, a great observer, a

0:02:10.080,0:02:15.440
great writer and communicator but also an amazing
person, so Gillian thank you for joining us,

0:02:16.240,0:02:22.880
from your otherwise incredibly busy schedule, but
before we get to you, just to tell the listeners

0:02:22.880,0:02:28.080
your contributions to this discussion is important,
we want you to get involved so please ask your

0:02:28.080,0:02:33.600
questions via the chat box on whichever platform
you're watching on - Linkedin, Facebook or Youtube -

0:02:34.160,0:02:39.120
please keep your questions brief and make sure
to tell us both who you are and where you are.

0:02:40.640,0:02:46.720
Gillian over to you, thanks again for joining
us and I want to start easy with this because

0:02:46.720,0:02:53.280
probably most of the listeners today
have never kind of taken an anthropology course,

0:02:53.280,0:03:00.160
have never read a book about anthropology, so maybe
- and you point out that anthropology is far less

0:03:00.160,0:03:06.240
studied than say economics or psychology - for those
people who missed out can you kind of summarise

0:03:06.240,0:03:11.600
what is anthropology all about, what's the core
kind of approach of anthropologists? Well thank

0:03:11.600,0:03:17.600
you very much indeed Peter and it's so great to
be talking to you; in fact you are the first event

0:03:17.600,0:03:22.240
I've done to really talk about the book and I'm
delighted to be talking to you at Saïd

0:03:22.240,0:03:28.080
Business School because the reality is that
outside the world of anthropology people who work

0:03:28.080,0:03:34.960
in business or finance or economics or accounting
or tech for the most part don't know what

0:03:34.960,0:03:42.320
anthropology is. We've all learned why it pays
to import a bit of psychology into your thinking,

0:03:42.320,0:03:47.920
books like Danny Kahneman or a wonderful book
Thinking Fast and Slow or Richard Taylor's books

0:03:47.920,0:03:53.280
explain to us why psychology matters, people
like Niall Ferguson are telling us why history

0:03:53.280,0:03:57.680
matters, particularly now in the pandemic, and
we've had people like Malcolm Gladwell writing

0:03:57.680,0:04:05.360
about neuroscience, but anthropology is not well
known and at its core it's about the study of man.

0:04:05.360,0:04:11.040
I say man because the word come from the Greek
'study of man' and they didn't have much sense of

0:04:11.840,0:04:15.920
political correctness in those days but it's
really about trying to understand what human

0:04:15.920,0:04:22.800
beings do and think and say and how they act. Now
you might say well isn't that what psychology does?

0:04:22.800,0:04:27.600
The answer is yes, it does, but it tends to
focus on individuals, and what anthropology

0:04:27.600,0:04:33.440
really looks at is the social and cultural
context and the assumptions above all else

0:04:33.440,0:04:39.280
that shape the way that we behave as groups, that
for the most part we're just not aware of at all,

0:04:40.160,0:04:46.400
and the key defining trait about how anthropology
does that is that it tries to look at societies

0:04:46.400,0:04:52.800
and cultures bottom-up to get what people call
the worm's eye view - not the bird's eye view - by

0:04:52.800,0:04:58.400
actually observing people themselves; it tries to
look at everything to see how it's interrelated

0:04:58.400,0:05:04.400
and to focus not just on what people say but the
gap between what they say and do and what they

0:05:04.400,0:05:10.080
don't say - what we call social silences, which
matter enormously. And anthropology tries to do

0:05:10.080,0:05:16.080
that in a comparative cross-cultural perspective
and it does that for two reasons. Firstly, the act

0:05:16.080,0:05:21.360
of thinking yourself into the mind of the other
someone who seems strange and different from you

0:05:21.920,0:05:28.400
gives you empathy for another point of view
that is completely crucial in a global world, but

0:05:28.400,0:05:34.240
also there's a second win-win because if you
put yourself into the mind of someone who

0:05:34.240,0:05:40.160
seems strange and really try and walk in their
shoes and embrace a different mindset at least

0:05:40.160,0:05:46.240
for a while that also gives you an ability to
look back at yourself with more perspective

0:05:46.960,0:05:51.840
and see those social silences or all those
parts of the world you ignore, those blind spots,

0:05:52.560,0:05:58.720
so that in essence is what anthropologists try to
do, and the same principle applies whether you are

0:05:58.720,0:06:02.800
in Papua New Guinea, whether you're out in the
Cook islands or whether you're in the corporate

0:06:02.800,0:06:09.520
boardroom. It really pays to have that insider/
outsider perspective and look at social silences.

0:06:13.200,0:06:18.880
And let's pick up right there, it's clear as
the practice - as a practising anthropologist

0:06:18.880,0:06:23.760
and journalist - you not only listen to what people
say and do but also what they don't, so it's really

0:06:23.760,0:06:29.520
the social science of social silence. It's hard
enough to observe what's in front of you, how do

0:06:29.520,0:06:34.640
you observe what's not said or what's not in view,
can you give us an example of how the dog that

0:06:34.640,0:06:40.800
didn't bark is what you're focusing on? Well that's
an incredibly good question and the reality is

0:06:40.800,0:06:47.120
we live in a world where we're drowning in noise
all the time, particularly in the media by the way,

0:06:47.120,0:06:53.840
and where most people are just so incredibly
busy just getting their job done that

0:06:53.840,0:06:58.960
it's very hard to actually look at what you're not
looking at or to think about the tasks that you're

0:06:58.960,0:07:04.320
not fulfilling that are not directly in front
of your nose, but to give you one practical

0:07:04.320,0:07:10.880
example where it really impacted my reporting
and subsequently impacted the wider global and

0:07:10.880,0:07:20.000
financial system. When I was a reporter back
in 2004, I was temporarily running something

0:07:20.000,0:07:25.200
called the Lex column on the FT, that's the 
corner which writes about corporate finance

0:07:26.000,0:07:30.480
and one day I was asked to write a memo
outlining what we should be writing about,

0:07:31.200,0:07:36.800
so I started off writing a list
of all the things we were already covering

0:07:36.800,0:07:42.000
and that everyone was talking about, so the
tech sector, industry, manufacturing, and in

0:07:42.000,0:07:47.680
the financial markets, I wrote about things like
the equity market because that's a noise, that's

0:07:47.680,0:07:53.200
what everyone talks about all the time in the
media and what most investors think about. And I

0:07:53.200,0:07:59.040
subsequently went around the city of London trying
to think like an anthropologist and look at what

0:07:59.040,0:08:03.840
people were not talking about and where a lot of
the activity was happening that wasn't discussed,

0:08:04.400,0:08:08.400
and it occurred to me that actually an
enormous amount of activity was happening

0:08:08.960,0:08:14.080
in the world of derivatives and credit
which the media barely talked about at all

0:08:14.080,0:08:19.440
and politicians completely ignored. So I became
very curious and started digging into that world

0:08:20.000,0:08:24.960
and eventually wrote something called the Iceberg
Memo which pointed out that the financial system

0:08:24.960,0:08:29.040
was like an iceberg - you had the equity
markets poking above the surface -

0:08:29.040,0:08:35.120
but they weren't actually most of the activity
 so I dug into the world of derivatives and

0:08:35.120,0:08:41.040
started doing that in 2005 and discovered as
we now know post-great financial crisis that

0:08:41.040,0:08:47.520
there was an incredible story bubbling there. But
that example of trying to actively look at the

0:08:47.520,0:08:53.840
social noise -- sorry, social silence instead of just
a noise, can be applied to almost any sphere.

0:08:54.720,0:09:01.600
How do you do that? Well sometimes just trying
to stop and ask yourself if I was a Martian

0:09:01.600,0:09:09.920
and landed where I am today what would I see that
I'm ignoring? Sometimes just trying to ask someone

0:09:09.920,0:09:14.720
who's an outsider to peer into your world and
point out the blind spots that you're missing

0:09:14.720,0:09:20.080
can be really helpful, in many ways that's what
an anthropologist does sometimes just actively

0:09:20.080,0:09:25.120
trying to embrace another point of view and think
yourself into the mind of someone else and then

0:09:25.120,0:09:31.680
look back at yourself that can you can do that too,
or else just simply ask yourself if I was to keep

0:09:31.680,0:09:38.240
a daily diary of what I'm basically doing or what
my company's doing and compare that to what we're

0:09:38.240,0:09:44.320
talking about then what would the gap be, what am
I missing, what is the area of social silence?

0:09:46.000,0:09:51.520
So I want to pick up one kind of side note in that
story - we'll get back to kind of anthropology and

0:09:51.520,0:09:56.080
anthro vision for a moment - but in the book you
make the point when you move

0:09:56.080,0:10:02.240
to Lex and then to the capital markets part of the
of the paper, it wasn't exactly something you were

0:10:02.240,0:10:07.920
eagerly awaiting, shall I say, I think I
get that from between the lines and

0:10:07.920,0:10:12.880
not so much between the lines yet in this space
you found a career opportunity or an opening

0:10:12.880,0:10:17.600
that you kind of capitalised in a big way. So
 many of the listeners here will be

0:10:17.600,0:10:22.960
young people and they may find themselves pushed
into a side thing that they hadn't anticipated,

0:10:22.960,0:10:29.680
you made an incredible kind of discovery there,
so tell me about how you felt when you moved over

0:10:29.680,0:10:35.440
into the capital market side because clearly at
the end when you were seen as this prophetess,

0:10:35.440,0:10:39.760
you know you saw the financial crisis before
everybody else - it was great - but there

0:10:39.760,0:10:45.360
was there's probably a journey in there and during
the journey, how was it in terms of listening? Yeah

0:10:45.360,0:10:50.880
absolutely Peter, and listen so it's very
easy for people early in their careers to look at

0:10:50.880,0:10:58.400
somebody like myself who appears to have had some
success and assume that somehow the line has gone

0:10:58.400,0:11:04.240
smoothly upwards, and that's particularly true
I think for young women looking at senior women

0:11:04.240,0:11:10.000
because senior women have got to where they are
are often quite reluctant to admit to setbacks or

0:11:10.000,0:11:14.880
so things not going right, and one of the
messages I'm always desperately keen to stress

0:11:14.880,0:11:21.120
to people is actually my career - like most
careers - has had incredible zigzags, ups and downs

0:11:21.120,0:11:27.120
and things haven't gone to plan and some
of where I've got to today is a result of hard work,

0:11:27.120,0:11:33.200
a lot of it is also due to luck or bad luck as well
and trying to respond. So in my case what happened

0:11:33.200,0:11:38.560
was that I was temporary head of the Lex column,
I actually applied to run the next column full

0:11:38.560,0:11:45.280
time and was turned down, I applied for various
other jobs I had inside the FT, these things happen,

0:11:45.280,0:11:50.320
you have good times in your career and
bad times in your career, I had written this

0:11:50.320,0:11:56.560
iceberg memo saying I thought the financial media
was really missing a trick by just focusing on the

0:11:56.560,0:12:01.760
visible parts of the iceberg and ignoring some of
the subterranean stuff and that didn't

0:12:01.760,0:12:07.760
make me wildly popular necessarily, and so
then when the capital markets opportunity came up,

0:12:08.400,0:12:13.600
although in many ways it was ideally suited for me,
I was a bit nervous of taking it to be honest,

0:12:13.600,0:12:17.840
partly because I was also pregnant
at the time and like many women who

0:12:18.400,0:12:23.520
are in larger institutions I was
terrified of being shunted off onto the mummy

0:12:23.520,0:12:29.840
track as we call it, but I did take it because I
could see some inklings, I had some inkling of how

0:12:29.840,0:12:34.960
much opportunity there might be and the capital
markets team at the time was not a high status

0:12:34.960,0:12:41.760
part of the FT, the glory high status and visible
parts of the ft were teams like the economics

0:12:41.760,0:12:46.320
department, they had - and I'd actually
started my career there - they had a lovely office

0:12:46.960,0:12:52.320
overlooking the river, St Paul's, they sat next
to the editor's room and the capital markets

0:12:52.320,0:12:57.040
team was right at the other end of the building
in the basement overlooking the trash cans.

0:12:58.080,0:13:03.120
So there was part of me thinking yikes,
I'm on the mummy track. But the reality

0:13:03.120,0:13:10.320
is that when I got there - partly because it
wasn't very closely monitored or scrutinised -

0:13:10.320,0:13:16.240
I had tremendous freedom to reinvent the
way we were working, but I also had tremendous

0:13:16.240,0:13:22.400
freedom to start poking around in the shadowy
bits of the iceberg or the areas of social silence

0:13:22.400,0:13:27.280
and see what an amazing story was there
and also what incredible opportunity.

0:13:29.360,0:13:34.320
And you did that so well, I think there's some
quote from Moby Dick about dropping your buckets,

0:13:34.880,0:13:38.960
we can all Google that at some point, but
thanks for that kind of aside because I think

0:13:38.960,0:13:43.200
it's important that people, especially my young
people listeners, understand the journeys that

0:13:43.200,0:13:49.440
we're all on. But back maybe to Anthro Vision, I'm
an economist and other social scientists and we

0:13:49.440,0:13:54.880
use the term science in in quotes, start
from hypotheses or guesses which then we

0:13:54.880,0:13:59.280
say that we test against data but that doesn't
seem to be the approach of anthropologists.

0:14:00.640,0:14:04.800
But clearly you select sites and individuals
with some theory in mind like your doctoral

0:14:04.800,0:14:08.800
work on wedding rituals, what's the difference
between an anthropologist's hunch that gets

0:14:08.800,0:14:14.800
them started on listening and an economist
hypothesis? Well I think the main difference

0:14:14.800,0:14:19.840
is, go back to that old cliche contact with
the enemy if you like or not the enemy in this

0:14:19.840,0:14:25.600
case, but people you're studying and hopefully are
very friendly and empathetic with. Many of the

0:14:25.600,0:14:32.400
intellectual tools we use start with a clear cut
theory and start by essentially creating a bounded

0:14:32.400,0:14:38.080
way to test that theory or experiment and really
focus on the inputs and exclude a lot of the

0:14:38.080,0:14:44.000
variables. Now obviously like any stereotype
that stereotype has plenty of exceptions

0:14:44.560,0:14:48.720
but there's this idea certainly
in the natural sciences which has bled into

0:14:49.280,0:14:54.560
many of the, in some parts of social sciences
that you have a theory, you have a hypothesis, you

0:14:54.560,0:15:00.560
create a model, you test it out and then hopefully
it can be repeatable.  Anthropology 

0:15:00.560,0:15:06.560
really starts in a different way by trying to - or
modern anthropology does - by trying to absorb what

0:15:06.560,0:15:14.400
you see with as few preconceptions as possible
and to try and at least initially really look at

0:15:14.400,0:15:21.200
the world in a holistic way without prejudging
what's important. Now in reality of course that's

0:15:21.200,0:15:24.880
very difficult because anyone who's
written an academic proposal knows you have to

0:15:24.880,0:15:28.880
indicate what you're going to go and study
and some anthropologists often go out with

0:15:28.880,0:15:34.400
some rough idea in their head about what they're
interested in, but one of the goals of anthropology

0:15:34.400,0:15:40.720
is to constantly challenge and test your
preconceptions and change course if necessary,

0:15:41.280,0:15:48.560
and in my case when I did my research I went off
into Soviet Central Asia - a place called Tajikistan -

0:15:49.200,0:15:57.520
and basically spent the first few months
working with one theory which was dominant in the

0:15:57.520,0:16:03.360
world of Central Asian studies in the 1990s - partly
because this was a question that worried the CIA -

0:16:03.360,0:16:10.240
so in the 1980s not 1990s - I forget how old
I am - but basically the question in the 1980s which

0:16:10.240,0:16:16.720
dominated all the Western policymakers was will
there be a revolution in places like Tajikistan

0:16:16.720,0:16:23.200
that could topple the Soviet regime? Like there was
in Afghanistan and you have to remember Tajikistan

0:16:23.200,0:16:28.560
where I did my work is next to Afghanistan and
in Afghanistan there'd be the Mujahideen who'd been

0:16:28.560,0:16:34.080
fighting the Soviet Communists and so groups
like the CIA used to call Soviet Central Asia

0:16:34.080,0:16:40.400
the soft underbelly because they assumed that
Islam and Communism was fundamentally opposed

0:16:40.400,0:16:45.760
to each other and that was the area most
likely to create a rebellion against Moscow,

0:16:46.800,0:16:51.840
so that was my framework. I got into the
field, I got into a Tajik village where I lived for

0:16:51.840,0:16:58.640
a year and started looking at events through
that lens and then realised after about four or

0:16:58.640,0:17:04.240
five months that actually I was wrong, that in
fact Islam and Communism were not diametrically

0:17:04.240,0:17:10.960
opposed on the ground in the village in terms of
how villagers were living or even how they saw the

0:17:10.960,0:17:16.000
world; Westerners might see the world that
way but the Tajik villagers I lived amongst did not,

0:17:16.720,0:17:21.840
so I had to go back and really rethink a lot
of my theories and ideas and in fact my thesis

0:17:21.840,0:17:28.320
ended up being on precisely the opposite, which
was why some kind of accommodation had occurred

0:17:28.320,0:17:33.600
on the ground between Islam and Communism
and why at the time it seemed to me that in

0:17:33.600,0:17:37.760
fact Central Asia was not going to be the soft
underbelly or the place most likely to revolt.

0:17:38.560,0:17:44.000
It later turned out I was correct; when the Soviet
Union did break up the revolution started in the

0:17:44.000,0:17:49.920
Baltic Republics and Tajikistan was almost the
last republic to break away, but that's just an

0:17:49.920,0:17:56.160
example of the kind of open-minded curiosity and
willingness to rethink that shapes a lot of the

0:17:56.160,0:18:00.880
anthropology discipline and which frankly I think
a lot of business leaders and financiers could

0:18:00.880,0:18:07.280
benefit too. No that's great and a lot of
what anthropologists do is ask questions, I want to

0:18:07.280,0:18:13.520
remind our listeners to ask their questions and
to go specifically on Linkedin, Facebook, YouTube

0:18:13.520,0:18:20.960
or on the chat box and please join, send us your
questions, we have one that I'll get to in a second

0:18:20.960,0:18:24.800
but let me go back to the book a little bit
and then I'll go to one of the questions. In the

0:18:24.800,0:18:33.200
book you talk about the kind of exchanges, and
specifically the notion of exchange or barter

0:18:33.200,0:18:38.000
is not about primitive society but in fact you
use the concept of exchange and barter to explain

0:18:38.640,0:18:44.080
basically the entire digital world, the Facebook
Cambridge Analytica where people trade their data

0:18:44.080,0:18:50.560
in exchange for something, so maybe you can
talk about that concept and one thing you

0:18:50.560,0:18:56.160
didn't talk about in the book is how that exchange
or barter is influenced by something called GDPR.

0:18:57.920,0:19:03.760
That's a great question Peter thank you, well
one of the reasons why people tend to discount

0:19:03.760,0:19:08.240
anthropology and there are many reasons - including
by the way I should stress some of which are the

0:19:08.240,0:19:13.760
fault of anthropologists themselves - but one reason
is that they think that anthropology is kind of

0:19:13.760,0:19:20.640
hippy-dippy, it only looks at ancient tribes
or exotic faraway peoples and the whole thing

0:19:20.640,0:19:25.680
smells of Indiana Jones. And that's
understandable in a lot of ways because in fact

0:19:25.680,0:19:32.720
in 19th century anthropologists did mostly study
what they considered to be primitive exotic

0:19:32.720,0:19:39.600
faraway tribes and I put all of those words in
quotations, and there was a sense of swashbuckling,

0:19:40.320,0:19:46.400
adventuring and all that kind of stuff,
but today anthropologists very much look at

0:19:46.400,0:19:52.880
the Western world, not just non-Western worlds,
and they're as likely to study an Amazon warehouse

0:19:52.880,0:19:58.400
frankly as in the Amazon jungle and the point
is that many of the approaches and ideas that

0:19:58.400,0:20:05.760
anthropologists have that were first developed in
non-western contexts are actually very relevant

0:20:05.760,0:20:10.720
to where we are in the modern industrialized
world as well. And the question of barter is

0:20:10.720,0:20:17.680
one of those because anyone read on Adam Smith
will have imbibed almost without realising it

0:20:18.240,0:20:23.280
the prejudice or the idea that barter is
something that just cave men do with beads and

0:20:23.280,0:20:29.360
berries and bits of cloth and that as soon as you
actually historically invented money and credit

0:20:29.920,0:20:36.560
and that basically wiped away barter. Well that's
not true historically, as people like David

0:20:36.560,0:20:42.320
Graeber the anthropologist have pointed out,
or Caroline Humphrey at Cambridge, in fact

0:20:42.320,0:20:48.880
barter has been very much concurrent with credit
and monetary-based systems and if anything

0:20:48.880,0:20:55.120
it seems that credit came first not barter. But the
second reason it's really interesting is that if

0:20:55.120,0:21:02.080
you look at the world of tech today what you can
see very very clearly is that there is actually an

0:21:02.080,0:21:07.040
explosion in the use of barter on digital
platforms because it's made it very simple,

0:21:07.600,0:21:11.120
and by that I don't mean the type
of barter that happens when you have

0:21:11.120,0:21:17.360
lots of sustainability-minded communities
swapping say babysitting for haircuts: I mean

0:21:17.360,0:21:23.200
the entire social media space is based on this
idea that you essentially give up your data in

0:21:23.200,0:21:28.000
exchange for services, you give
up your personal information when you click

0:21:28.000,0:21:32.800
on a Google search or something like that and in
exchange you get an incredibly valuable service.

0:21:33.520,0:21:39.440
Now some people say it might say well that's
not barter because there isn't a deliberate

0:21:39.440,0:21:45.200
negotiation of terms and people aren't even
aware half the time explicitly of that exchange.

0:21:46.400,0:21:51.040
That's an entirely fair point but at the same
time what you do have happening is a massive

0:21:51.040,0:21:57.360
set of exchanges without money which we just don't
have the tools to analyse. I mean, in the American

0:21:57.360,0:22:02.640
legal system the only way to measure whether
there's an anti-trust abuse is by looking at

0:22:02.640,0:22:08.000
consumer prices; there's no way in the legal system
to really measure what happens if there's monopoly

0:22:08.000,0:22:12.800
abuse without monetary prices, economists tend
to measure almost everything in life through

0:22:13.440,0:22:19.680
money as opposed to non-monetary exchanges and
when people evaluate companies they look at the

0:22:19.680,0:22:24.480
things that they can be counted on their balance
sheet, not the exchanges that happen without

0:22:24.480,0:22:30.720
money. So there's a big problem here but if we
ignore barter you really don't understand most of

0:22:30.720,0:22:36.880
what drives Silicon Valley today and I use the
word barter because frankly it's the only word we got

0:22:36.880,0:22:42.480
in English to describe a non-monetary exchange; and
I also passionately believe that if we're going to

0:22:42.480,0:22:50.480
build a tech sector in which people actually have
more trust, has more credibility then we

0:22:50.480,0:22:56.400
have to mention the word barter because once you
mention the word barter you recognise there's a

0:22:56.400,0:23:01.840
two-way exchange happening with data, it's one of
the reasons I think that many consumers actually

0:23:02.400,0:23:06.960
accept losing some of their privacy because
they like getting the other services back,

0:23:07.520,0:23:14.480
but then we can start talking about how to improve
the terms of trade of barter, that's a key thing

0:23:14.480,0:23:20.880
because to build a better tech sector we have
to make that barter trade more transparent,

0:23:21.600,0:23:27.040
more empower consumers in relation to
it, they need to be able to have data

0:23:27.040,0:23:33.520
portability between different providers etc
etc but that all starts with recognising

0:23:33.520,0:23:38.640
something that economists often don't, which is not
everything in life happens via the medium of money.

0:23:40.880,0:23:46.480
Excellent, so let's go to the second part so does
GDPR solve that problem? Does it help, does it hurt,

0:23:46.480,0:23:53.760
does it make visible the invisible exchanges?
That's a great question, I think the GDPR actually

0:23:53.760,0:23:58.400
does in some ways because what you're trying to
do with GDPR is to improve the terms of trade

0:23:58.400,0:24:04.080
of barter. You're not saying you can't swap data
for services, and by the way I don't think most

0:24:04.080,0:24:10.320
people want to actually re-intermediate
these exchanges with money in my view because

0:24:10.320,0:24:13.840
barter is pretty efficient a
lot of the time in the tech world today,

0:24:14.400,0:24:19.440
 but GDPR does say we're going to try and
improve the terms of trade for consumers by giving

0:24:19.440,0:24:24.240
them more protection in terms of how their data is
used, more awareness if they want, although in fact

0:24:24.240,0:24:30.000
most consumers don't take it. I think there is
a big missing piece of GDPR which is to my mind

0:24:30.000,0:24:34.560
one of the crucial things that has to happen
next in tech is that consumers need portability

0:24:34.560,0:24:40.160
of their data, in much the same way that they
have portability of bank accounts and the onus in

0:24:40.160,0:24:46.640
financial services is on banks to make it easy to
swap service provider not the consumer, if you

0:24:46.640,0:24:51.600
had that in the tech world whereby I could switch
social media accounts or platforms and stuff

0:24:51.600,0:24:55.520
really easily, if you had that in the tech world
there might start to be more genuine competition

0:24:55.520,0:25:02.560
between big tech companies. A question from
Simon in London, how do you explain the rise

0:25:02.560,0:25:08.560
of social media influencers? Are they here to stay?
That's a great question and I think what you're

0:25:08.560,0:25:14.080
seeing there is something which in fact one of
the Oxford Saïd's own professors talked about

0:25:14.080,0:25:19.760
which is a shift in the patterns of trust, as
Rachel Botsman says in her book which is brilliant

0:25:19.760,0:25:25.600
essentially there's two types of trust 
that glue societies and communities together,

0:25:26.320,0:25:31.280
and this again is a core thought of anthropology
you either get vertical patterns of trust where

0:25:31.280,0:25:36.960
people essentially trust in a leader or an
institution or a hierarchy to glue them together,

0:25:37.520,0:25:42.080
or you have horizontal forms of trust where
people kind of trust each other, their peer group

0:25:42.080,0:25:48.240
and essentially collaborate and operate as a
group in that way. Now historically, small

0:25:48.240,0:25:53.440
face-to-face communities have tended to have
more horizontal trust and that's

0:25:53.440,0:25:59.040
still very prevalent in many many settings where
you know your office workers, your peer

0:25:59.040,0:26:03.360
group, your neighbors and you all
hang together and trust each other; but obviously

0:26:03.360,0:26:10.000
as groups get bigger you start trusting more in
vertical systems because you can't have everyone

0:26:10.000,0:26:15.120
knowing everyone else and that's why you get these
sort of companies/institutions where essentially

0:26:15.120,0:26:20.720
you're trusting a CEO. Now what is fascinating
about the digital world in the 21st century

0:26:21.440,0:26:27.600
is that although peer-to-peer horizontal trust
used to be small groups and the launch of digital

0:26:27.600,0:26:33.120
platforms means you've created mechanisms to have
peer group horizontal trust on a massive scale,

0:26:33.760,0:26:39.200
and Rachel calls this distributed trust and
that's kind of what drives platforms like

0:26:39.200,0:26:45.360
Uber, it drives things like Airbnb, in some
ways it even drives something like Bitcoin,

0:26:45.360,0:26:50.000
where you have ways of essentially verifying
each other online and you essentially build

0:26:50.000,0:26:55.680
trust that way. Now social immediate influences
in some ways are tapping into that because what

0:26:55.680,0:27:00.960
you're having there is the ability of people
to start influencing to a massive degree

0:27:01.520,0:27:06.640
people through these horizontal networks and
channels and that's quite different from the

0:27:06.640,0:27:12.160
traditional patterns which used to be much more
vertical-based. I mean to give you an example,

0:27:12.160,0:27:18.400
in the past if you're going to go to a
restaurant you might look at Zagats for an advice

0:27:18.400,0:27:24.800
from an expert someone who you trusted upwards, now
you're more likely to look horizontally at say 

0:27:24.800,0:27:29.520
online rating systems or even social media
influencers who can actually get into the system.

0:27:30.160,0:27:36.800
Now that's open to a lot of abuse and manipulation
and sometimes what seems like peer-to-peer

0:27:36.800,0:27:44.000
influence is actually behind the scenes shaped
by powerful corporations in a more vertical model,

0:27:44.000,0:27:49.840
but it's a fascinating pattern and it shows that
one of the most important things that I think many

0:27:49.840,0:27:55.600
people have missed in the world of consumer goods
research and marketing in recent years is that

0:27:56.480,0:28:00.720
because we have the illusion in the Western
world that we're all individualists with

0:28:00.720,0:28:06.560
agency to shape and choose our own identities
and we think that we in our own heads are making

0:28:06.560,0:28:12.320
all our consumer decisions and so psychology,
individual psychology has been a very dominant

0:28:12.320,0:28:17.520
force in the world of consumer goods marketing,
but anthropology says actually no it's not just

0:28:17.520,0:28:24.240
about the individual: we're shaped by groups too in
this horizontal way and it matters. So long way to

0:28:24.240,0:28:30.800
answer, but again I think that reinforces my point
about anthropology being valuable. So I want to

0:28:30.800,0:28:36.400
take a question from Joanna in Frankfurt, can you
expand on the specific way how a worm's eye view

0:28:36.400,0:28:41.680
differs from the bird's eye view and in somewhat
tongue in cheek that birds tend to eat worms?

0:28:43.600,0:28:46.560
Yeah I hadn't thought about that, that's a good
point I'd better be careful about that metaphor

0:28:46.560,0:28:54.560
then going forward. Yeah I mean I'll give you
a tangible example, if an economist is studying

0:28:55.200,0:29:02.640
say educational systems, they might
gather all the macro level statistics about

0:29:02.640,0:29:08.960
schools across the UK they might do all
kinds of models or something looking at 

0:29:08.960,0:29:15.440
cost-benefit analysis in schools, they might
very much look top-down across a macro picture

0:29:16.080,0:29:21.760
and they would probably define their field
of study as being schools or education.

0:29:23.040,0:29:29.040
If an anthropologist was looking at education
they'd probably go and sit inside a school room

0:29:30.080,0:29:35.600
for a month and just observe everything,
and they'd probably start with just one

0:29:35.600,0:29:40.560
or two schools who can have an in-depth
face-to-face study and then try and see

0:29:40.560,0:29:44.160
how pupils in the school and teachers
were experiencing everyday life,

0:29:44.720,0:29:51.360
bottom up if you like. Now the flaw of the
anthropology model is that it can be subjective

0:29:51.360,0:29:56.720
it can be very localised, you often end up
extrapolating from small to big in ways that

0:29:56.720,0:30:03.040
can be dangerous and it can also be
undirected and irritatingly vague to many people

0:30:03.040,0:30:08.480
who are economists because you don't end up with
a neat powerpoint or anything like that

0:30:08.480,0:30:14.160
or a nice algorithm or computer model.
The upside is that you can often get a

0:30:14.160,0:30:19.520
very different perspective from the bird's eye
view and a much richer deeper perspective and

0:30:19.520,0:30:24.400
they don't have to be either/or, they actually
complement each other. I sometimes joke that

0:30:25.200,0:30:30.640
anthropology can act a bit like salt in food in
that when you add it in it makes other ingredients

0:30:31.280,0:30:36.800
taste better and binds them together and so
anthropology plus economics is a very powerful

0:30:36.800,0:30:42.560
combination or anthropology plus finance or
anthropology plus an MBA, I'd say.

0:30:43.760,0:30:47.760
Well in fact I run a research project at
Oxford, we have an economist and an

0:30:47.760,0:30:51.600
anthropologist working side by side
and I can attest to what you're saying.

0:30:52.400,0:30:57.280
I just wanted to note for anybody who's joined us
a little bit late, welcome to today's Leadership

0:30:57.280,0:31:02.000
in Extraordinary Times, I'm Peter Tufano, the Dean
of Oxford University's Saïd Business School and

0:31:02.000,0:31:06.480
we're talking to Dr Gillian Tett, the US editor
at large of the Financial Times to discuss her new

0:31:06.480,0:31:12.000
book, Anthro Vision: how anthropology can explain
business and life. By the way all these discussions

0:31:12.000,0:31:17.680
will also be captured as a podcast that I host
and you'll be able to download this episode soon

0:31:17.680,0:31:22.800
or catch up on previous ones wherever you get your
podcast from, searching Leadership in Extraordinary

0:31:22.800,0:31:28.000
Times. Okay back to some questions, I've got a
lot of audience questions and a few more from me.

0:31:29.200,0:31:33.440
So Gillian, in your book you talk about the
Hawthorne Effect, the famous Hawthorne Effect

0:31:33.440,0:31:36.720
that people behave differently if they
know they're being observed and a number

0:31:36.720,0:31:40.880
of books and movies have - as well as
academic studies - have captured this

0:31:42.080,0:31:47.120
and anthropologists I think worry a great deal
about destroying the cultures they observe. How

0:31:47.120,0:31:52.560
do you walk this line with the topic like moral
money where I think you actually have a point of

0:31:52.560,0:31:58.000
view that companies and markets need to accept the
responsibilities of their actions or connections.

0:31:59.280,0:32:03.600
There's several different questions there.
Firstly anthropologists do worry enormously about

0:32:04.240,0:32:11.600
changing the material they study, both on a
micro level of, in terms of, if I'm observing a

0:32:11.600,0:32:16.800
group or living amongst them can I really pretend
to be observing anything remotely neutral way?

0:32:16.800,0:32:20.960
And anthropologists tied themselves up in knots
in a kind of post-structuralist way in the late

0:32:20.960,0:32:25.840
20th century and sometimes tried to almost
commit intellectual suicide by saying they have

0:32:25.840,0:32:31.120
no right to study anything, which on one
level is I understand the qualms but it's also

0:32:31.120,0:32:35.760
not very useful and you do the best you can to
acknowledge how you may be affecting people around

0:32:35.760,0:32:42.000
you, but also recognising that it's still worthy
of study and on a macro level anthropologists

0:32:42.000,0:32:47.280
often won't worry about whether their presence in
communities which have not had a lot of contact in

0:32:47.280,0:32:54.080
the past with Western societies, might
be influenced or infiltrated or even destroyed by

0:32:54.080,0:33:01.280
contact and partly as a result of anthropologists
and there's a big field of literature about

0:33:01.280,0:33:06.320
that, so that's very much an issue and it's
something anthropologists are still grappling with.

0:33:06.320,0:33:10.720
but in terms of how we as a journalist -
and I'm really talking the journalists -

0:33:10.720,0:33:17.760
respond to this question, something like
moral money in many ways epitomises the problem or

0:33:17.760,0:33:24.560
the challenge but also the potential opportunity
in the sense that Moral Money seeks

0:33:24.560,0:33:30.400
to be neutral and comment on the sustainability
movement; it's drummed into journalists

0:33:30.400,0:33:36.240
that you try and keep opinion and reporting
separate. It's becoming very hard these days

0:33:36.240,0:33:42.240
as the media world changes to embrace things
like newsletters which are kind of a hybrid

0:33:43.200,0:33:49.840
but we try to cover the waterfront and
neither endorse nor excessively knock down

0:33:49.840,0:33:54.560
the sustainability movement; we try and simply
 expose what's happening for good and bad.

0:33:55.440,0:33:58.160
So that's what we're trying to do - we don't
always manage to do it but that's what we're

0:33:58.160,0:34:04.160
trying to do - and yet at the same time we can't
ignore the fact that the very fact there is

0:34:04.160,0:34:09.600
something like Moral Money as a platform on
the Financial Times covering sustainability

0:34:09.600,0:34:15.360
has certainly acted as a spur to debate - we
think anyway - in this world and so we're

0:34:15.360,0:34:21.120
not just a neutral fly on the wall observer, the
very fact we're covering something is fostering

0:34:21.120,0:34:26.640
change in itself both good and bad.
We are very proud that we do appear to have

0:34:26.640,0:34:32.960
played a role in setting the debate quite often in
this world at Moral Money and so that's just a

0:34:32.960,0:34:38.800
predicament and at the end of the day you can beat
yourself up about it and get into intellectual

0:34:38.800,0:34:43.760
knots, or as I say commit intellectual suicide
and say there's no point in doing anything or

0:34:43.760,0:34:47.840
you simply say we're going to try to the best of
our ability to cover the world of sustainability

0:34:48.400,0:34:55.680
and to uncover these social silences, and much of
what sustainability is about doing is actually

0:34:55.680,0:35:00.800
about trying to get companies and investors to
think about things that used to be an area of

0:35:01.360,0:35:07.280
social silence or an externality to the model -
like the environment - we're going to try and

0:35:07.280,0:35:12.080
do that and do it to the best of our ability but
be constantly self-critical about where we are

0:35:12.080,0:35:18.480
failing. And so with that in mind - and by the
way I'm gonna ask you to do a big shout out

0:35:18.480,0:35:22.960
to Moral Money because I think we both assume that
everybody knows we're talking about - but it's this

0:35:22.960,0:35:28.000
incredibly popular newsletter that you created
about two years ago and it's got incredible

0:35:28.000,0:35:34.080
circulation but I'll put that in there somewhere
make sure everybody gets the great thing about

0:35:34.080,0:35:38.240
Moral Money, but a question from Catherine that
may or may not relate to what you've just said.

0:35:39.040,0:35:44.560
Catherine Cheung asks how do we use an anthropologist's
angle to help organisations and leadership

0:35:44.560,0:35:50.720
to motivate changes and embrace resistance to
changes? Well I think that actually anthropology

0:35:50.720,0:35:56.960
is brilliant in this respect for several reasons.
One is that at the very core of anthropology

0:35:58.000,0:36:05.040
is the idea - to quote Genevieve Bell, who's been an
anthropologist working at Intel - that you can't assume

0:36:05.040,0:36:09.840
that everyone else thinks the way that you do, you
can't assume that everyone else thinks the way you

0:36:09.840,0:36:18.000
do, which is incredibly obvious and everyone kind
of knows that but it's also incredibly common that

0:36:18.560,0:36:23.440
executives forget because if
you have slithered your way up the greasy

0:36:23.440,0:36:29.360
pole of a corporate hierarchy and end up
sequestered in some nice fancy corner office

0:36:29.920,0:36:36.000
and are incredibly busy and have to constantly
project self-confidence and tell everyone else and

0:36:36.000,0:36:42.400
yourself that you know what you're doing, then it's
so easy to end up being cloistered or bunkered

0:36:42.400,0:36:48.240
in a pretty narrow world view, to get tunnel vision
and to assume that you think you are

0:36:48.240,0:36:53.680
self-evidently right and therefore everyone else
must think like you. And I say that not because I'm

0:36:53.680,0:36:59.680
using some kind of theoretical framework
but because I've seen that exactly happen on Wall

0:36:59.680,0:37:06.480
Street and in the tech sector, just to name two
examples. I've often said the reason

0:37:06.480,0:37:11.920
why the 2008 crisis happened was not because
financial companies, CEOs and masters of the

0:37:11.920,0:37:18.560
universe were mad, evil, greedy or crazy - although
maybe a few were - but it's because they were beset

0:37:18.560,0:37:23.600
with tunnel vision and assumed that everyone else
was thinking the way that they do - same in the

0:37:23.600,0:37:28.960
tech sector. So the first thing you do if you
want to actually effect change in the company

0:37:29.600,0:37:36.400
is to embrace the core anthropology idea of
empathy and listen to people and trying to see the

0:37:36.400,0:37:43.040
world through other people's eyes and also to try
and see the social silences in your own company

0:37:43.040,0:37:47.600
which might be blocking change, and
it may be very hard for you to see that

0:37:47.600,0:37:52.560
but - and the reality is - that often
having outsiders come in and explain that

0:37:52.560,0:37:57.680
is much more effective, and to go back to
the Hawthorne Study - and this is a very sort of

0:37:57.680,0:38:03.360
shallow example and is very dated - but when
the Hawthorne Study took place and this was

0:38:03.360,0:38:09.440
when a group of anthropologists went in
and studied big telecoms company

0:38:09.440,0:38:15.200
in the 1930s in Chicago and the senior
managers there couldn't understand why

0:38:15.920,0:38:20.960
some of their own employees were so uninterested
it seemed in getting promoted and getting paid

0:38:20.960,0:38:25.360
more money and it just didn't make sense to
them looking at the world through their eyes,

0:38:26.240,0:38:31.760
and it wasn't until people did bottom-up worm's
eye studies and actually spoke to the employees and

0:38:31.760,0:38:36.960
looked at how they were operating that they realised
that their culture developed amongst the workforce

0:38:36.960,0:38:44.800
that if somebody actually got promoted they were
ostracised by their group and socially punished.

0:38:44.800,0:38:49.280
So actually the incentive structure for
them at the base level wasn't as obvious

0:38:49.280,0:38:54.720
as the managers thought, and in my book
I talk about similar examples of General Motors,

0:38:54.720,0:39:00.640
where essentially the managers of
General Motors had no idea what was happening

0:39:00.640,0:39:06.880
down in the locker rooms on the factory floors
and why so many of their grandiose plans simply

0:39:06.880,0:39:11.120
kept running into the dust because of what
was happening at the grassroots of the company,

0:39:12.560,0:39:14.880
So ...which is a great chapter in the book.

0:39:15.760,0:39:22.240
In a spirit of a little bit of intellectual
whiplash here, a question from Tafa Aghasian

0:39:22.240,0:39:27.280
- apologies if I'm mispronouncing both the name
and the question too - do you think that platonist

0:39:27.280,0:39:33.040
philosophy in the core culture of Tajikistan might
be closer to Soviet Communism than capitalism?

0:39:34.240,0:39:37.280
Well I think that's a great question, I
suspect there aren't that many people 

0:39:37.280,0:39:43.360
watching who have a great sort of
passionate interest in the philosophy and

0:39:43.360,0:39:48.720
intellectual thought of Tajikistan, you
know I do. One of my many frustrations today

0:39:48.720,0:39:55.840
is that people outside Central Asia - people in
the West - think that Islam is a monolithic whole

0:39:56.400,0:40:01.200
and tend to write off a lot of Islamic
cultures because they're in prejudice or assuming

0:40:01.200,0:40:06.480
it's all basically similar to Wahhabi
and thinking. In fact in Tajikistan it was

0:40:06.480,0:40:13.840
a very rich tradition of Sufism, which is a very
synchronistic thought, it's not a fundamentalist

0:40:13.840,0:40:19.520
way of looking at the world at all and it's much
more about collaboration and all the rest of it,

0:40:19.520,0:40:24.480
and yes it probably is more similar to a sort
of communist/socialist/collectivist mentality

0:40:25.040,0:40:31.360
than a capitalist one. In fact briefly the
reason why I came to think that the Soviet

0:40:31.360,0:40:36.080
communist system and Islam had coexisted quite
well on the ground in Tajikistan with actually

0:40:36.080,0:40:41.360
less to do with that and more to do with the
way that the Tajiks were divided in their space

0:40:42.400,0:40:48.800
and genders and symbolically recognising
a very big gap between public and private,

0:40:48.800,0:40:55.440
male and female space and symbols, and very broadly,
very very roughly speaking the public male sector

0:40:55.440,0:41:00.880
was associated with Islam and communism, the
private female domestic sector was associated

0:41:00.880,0:41:06.080
with Tajik Islamic identity and because they
were separated in the minds and lives and

0:41:06.080,0:41:13.040
physical arenas of everyday life they managed to
co-exist quite happily, something which Western

0:41:13.040,0:41:17.840
people bred in a Protestant Christian tradition
find it almost impossible to understand,

0:41:17.840,0:41:22.320
the idea that you can have situational
difference to that degree within one culture

0:41:22.320,0:41:27.440
because Protestant Christianity tends to
presume that we have to be consistent in

0:41:27.440,0:41:33.200
all areas of our life, that's a core idea within
the Christian tradition, but it's not universal

0:41:33.200,0:41:37.360
and the core point without going into
details is that we can't just

0:41:37.360,0:41:42.160
assume that the cultural assumptions we have
unthinkingly absorbed from our own environment -

0:41:42.160,0:41:48.720
whether it's a microclimate of the CEO suite or
a wider Western culture - we cannot assume that

0:41:48.720,0:41:54.800
they're held by everyone else and if we do we end
up making mistakes and missing opportunities too.

0:41:56.080,0:42:02.480
Great well thank you for that detailed
answer to a very careful question.

0:42:03.120,0:42:08.000
I want to focus a bit on the difference between
anthropologists and journalists for a moment,

0:42:08.000,0:42:12.320
so as an anthropologist you have the luxury of an
extended period of observation you were saying in

0:42:12.320,0:42:17.600
Tajikistan that what you concluded at the
beginning or what you thought in the beginning was

0:42:17.600,0:42:21.520
different than what you concluded at the end of
six months, and I suppose if you were you know

0:42:21.520,0:42:25.760
a journalist you had a daily deadline and you had
to write the article after two months or one month

0:42:25.760,0:42:28.960
it might have been different than the
article you'd write after a year, so

0:42:28.960,0:42:33.600
how does the difference between
the time frames that an anthropologist has

0:42:33.600,0:42:37.200
and the time frames that say a journalist
has where you're on deadline all the time

0:42:37.840,0:42:43.360
affect how you practice anthro vision or does it
make you do your journalism different holding back

0:42:43.360,0:42:48.560
because you're not quite sure if you've got the
story right? Well you make a great point there and

0:42:48.560,0:42:55.920
the reality is that in partly it's a question of
scale and speed in that anthropologists write and

0:42:55.920,0:43:02.240
study slowly for a very small audience and have
the ability to think about nuance and context and

0:43:02.880,0:43:09.040
basically be very thoughtful. Whereas, unfortunately
journalists are often operating very fast and they

0:43:09.040,0:43:15.760
have to produce content which needs to be quickly
understood by a very large group of people and

0:43:15.760,0:43:22.880
invariably that will lead to mistakes, errors
- as much of omission as actual deliberate mistakes -

0:43:23.840,0:43:28.880
and it leads them to basically often pander to
stereotypes. I mean to give one example, link to my

0:43:28.880,0:43:36.400
last answer when I went back to Tajikistan
as a journalist in 1993 and 94 during civil war

0:43:36.400,0:43:39.760
I realised that most of the
other journalists were saying the war

0:43:39.760,0:43:43.920
had happened because Islamic fundamentalists
were battling against the Communist regime

0:43:44.800,0:43:48.400
and it was all about Islamic
fundamentalism basically creating this war,

0:43:48.960,0:43:53.520
and in fact on the ground the reality
was much more subtle than that in that

0:43:53.520,0:43:59.680
it really was an interregional fight and it wasn't
really about Islam versus communism at all. Now on

0:43:59.680,0:44:04.400
one level I don't blame journalists for writing
that because that basically pandered to their own

0:44:04.400,0:44:09.440
ideas or rather fitted with their own ideas and it
was something their own readers could understand,

0:44:10.560,0:44:16.640
but at the same time it illustrates a need for
a constant critical reappraisal in journalism

0:44:16.640,0:44:22.400
and above all else a willingness to explore both
social silences, what people aren't talking about,

0:44:22.960,0:44:28.320
and to think about how the cultural assumptions
and tribalism of the media is affecting their

0:44:28.320,0:44:36.000
own view of the world. The tragedy today is that
doing that requires time and space and money

0:44:36.000,0:44:40.480
and journalism and the media is under so much
pressure that it often doesn't have any of that,

0:44:41.040,0:44:47.440
and on top of that journalists are
fighting for attention in a world that's

0:44:47.440,0:44:53.840
there's a lot of competition for attention and
it's very noisy. The last point I'd make though

0:44:53.840,0:44:59.360
is that one trick I often try and tell people
is to imagine dominoes and not in the sense of

0:44:59.360,0:45:03.760
dominoes all toppling over in a chain
reaction which is how the metaphors you normally

0:45:03.760,0:45:08.960
use, but if you think about how a domino game's
played in that you have two halves of a domino

0:45:08.960,0:45:13.920
piece and the game is trying to match up one half
of your piece with another half of someone else's

0:45:13.920,0:45:19.120
piece but then you have the other half which can
be different, and so good journalism today I think

0:45:20.000,0:45:27.920
finds a hook that the audience will recognise - even
if it actually reinforces existing stereotypes -

0:45:27.920,0:45:32.960
and they hook the audience into read on that
basis but then gives them the other half of the

0:45:32.960,0:45:38.320
domino, an entirely different set of information
that might expose social silences that gets them

0:45:38.320,0:45:45.040
to rethink, so you get people to think to read and
then to rethink. That's a goal but boy is it easier

0:45:45.600,0:45:51.360
said and said than done, it's a lifetime's work
and your editor has to give you a lot of space in

0:45:51.360,0:45:56.080
order to get to the below the fold part of the
story. And humility. I mean I often say when I was

0:45:56.080,0:46:00.480
I was running the FDA editorial operations in
america for a number of years I used to say to

0:46:00.480,0:46:06.880
people never forget that on a good day we get 40 percent
of the truth; I think our competitors get

0:46:06.880,0:46:14.800
30 but there's still 60 we don't know so always
be open to listening to people afterwards. 

0:46:14.800,0:46:19.760
So we've got about 15 minutes again for
participants, please send us your questions

0:46:19.760,0:46:25.040
we've got a bunch that I'll get to in a second but
I want to ask a parochial question for a moment,

0:46:25.920,0:46:29.680
using your superpowers of Anthro Vision
- and I think you should market this as a

0:46:29.680,0:46:34.640
superpower by the way - let's turn our attention
to business schools, the world that I live in.

0:46:34.640,0:46:39.440
What are your observations about them? Are we
exemplars of weird - which is an acronym I hadn't

0:46:39.440,0:46:44.080
heard until I read your book - which is Western
educated individualistic rich and democratic,

0:46:44.080,0:46:49.680
what do you see with your anthro vision
eyeglasses on when you look at

0:46:49.680,0:46:54.880
business education in business schools? Well
we're actually in a much better position to

0:46:54.880,0:46:59.520
answer this from me for two reasons. Firstly that
you did that wonderful study recently

0:46:59.520,0:47:04.400
of what happened to business schools in World War
II or the last time there was a really big shock

0:47:04.400,0:47:07.840
and I think you should go out and write a book
about what's happening to business schools now but

0:47:07.840,0:47:12.560
in the pandemic but also because I know that
the Oxford Saïd Business School has tried to

0:47:12.560,0:47:19.280
widen the lens and look at business in a much
more broad-based way than in the past and for

0:47:19.280,0:47:24.240
that I salute you and you are looking at a
lot of social silences like the

0:47:24.800,0:47:29.200
environment and things like that, I think the
institution of business schools is fascinating

0:47:29.200,0:47:35.440
because essentially they've been operating a
bit like seminaries in the medieval church

0:47:35.440,0:47:40.560
in the sense that they not only create networks of
people who are inculcated in the same set of ideas

0:47:41.120,0:47:49.280
but they also in many ways actually foster this
mental framework which has in the past

0:47:49.280,0:47:55.680
very much assumed that business and finance was
an activity aside from the rest of life, it's why

0:47:55.680,0:48:01.760
you have specialised business schools, that 
much of it was defined and mediated through money,

0:48:01.760,0:48:05.680
which is why you have all these corporate
accounting courses, that everything that really

0:48:05.680,0:48:09.600
mattered could be captured on the balance sheet,
which is again why there's been a lot of focus on

0:48:09.600,0:48:15.120
corporate accounting, and that it was a game that
people played at certain stages in their career,

0:48:15.120,0:48:18.560
so they had to go while they were young
and be inculcated and then move on.

0:48:19.280,0:48:25.200
And you know all of those on one level, like
everything is partly true but not entirely true

0:48:25.840,0:48:30.560
and I think what's going to be interesting in
the future is really to see firstly whether this

0:48:30.560,0:48:34.880
Milton Friedman concept of business being
all about shareholders and profit and loss

0:48:35.520,0:48:40.240
how that gets redefined because of course we
are now looking at an era of stakeholderism,

0:48:40.880,0:48:45.600
how people actually try and recognise that
business could be integrated with other areas

0:48:45.600,0:48:53.920
of life be that environment, urban planning,
etc etc, and also the degree to which people

0:48:53.920,0:48:59.120
start seeing as business schools or even the idea
of studying business and enterprise as something

0:48:59.120,0:49:05.440
which happens at all stages of life, not just as a
kind of initiation rite into the corporate world,

0:49:06.240,0:49:10.320
and I say I know that Oxford Saïd is thinking
about a lot of these ideas in a very creative way

0:49:10.320,0:49:15.520
and so I do salute you for that but I think
the debate about this has only just started.

0:49:15.520,0:49:23.360
And one last point I'd leave you with is that
if you think about what the pandemic has done

0:49:23.360,0:49:30.320
to how we see business, the search
for the vaccine has sparked a scramble

0:49:31.120,0:49:36.640
to not only have public private partnership in
a way that frankly went totally out of fashion

0:49:36.640,0:49:43.920
in recent years, but also it had company to company
partnership and collaboration, and again that was

0:49:43.920,0:49:50.080
something which was not dominant as an idea
in the era of say Milton Friedman when it was

0:49:50.080,0:49:55.360
all about you know capitalism being red-blooded
competition or competition red in

0:49:55.360,0:50:00.720
tooth and claw whatever the phrase is, but I
suspect going forward we're going to see growing

0:50:00.720,0:50:06.960
expectations of public private partnership and
company-wide collaboration particularly or cut

0:50:06.960,0:50:12.160
across company collaboration, particularly when
handling issues like climate change it's another

0:50:12.160,0:50:17.840
very interesting shift that I'll be interested
to see how business schools do or do not echo

0:50:17.840,0:50:24.720
that in their syllabuses. Absolutely
so that thank you for that, and I want to use

0:50:24.720,0:50:30.080
Harriet Short's question, Harriet from Bath, how
would anthropologists go about investigating

0:50:30.080,0:50:35.200
users experiences of online video platforms
when working from home during the pandemic?

0:50:36.480,0:50:40.560
The chapter in your book about this - so Harriet
hasn't had a chance as I have to read the book -

0:50:40.560,0:50:44.880
but I want to get through in our
last few minutes, three kind of topical things one

0:50:44.880,0:50:48.960
is the pandemic and there's a couple of others
that are particularly relevant. Today - May 25th -

0:50:49.840,0:50:53.840
briefly anthropologists had a real
challenge when the world went online,

0:50:54.800,0:51:01.520
they started doing their observations
through video calls and video platforms.

0:51:01.520,0:51:07.120
That has disadvantages in the sense that it's
actually directed not undirected and that's a

0:51:07.120,0:51:12.640
big problem, but it also has advantages
because not only does it allow them to reach

0:51:12.640,0:51:18.000
a much wider range of people but it also
sometimes puts people they interview or talk to

0:51:18.560,0:51:23.520
in settings that they feel more comfortable with
and the interviewee feels more empowerment and

0:51:23.520,0:51:29.360
control than otherwise. Tiny example,
there's an anthropologist studying

0:51:30.160,0:51:35.040
low-income people in India, had spent a
lot of time talking to rickshaw drivers,

0:51:35.040,0:51:39.600
had always until that point the rickshaw
drivers wouldn't meet them anywhere other

0:51:39.600,0:51:43.680
than in the anthropologist's office often - and
put on special suits to come and meet them -

0:51:44.640,0:51:49.760
when they went on the video platforms because the
rickshaw drivers all have mobile phones 

0:51:49.760,0:51:53.840
they would literally just sit in their rickshaws
and chat in their normal clothes and normal

0:51:53.840,0:51:59.280
environment, because they felt more empowered and
they weren't as scared of talking to an outsider

0:52:00.080,0:52:02.880
and they often did it in their home, so
actually anthropologists got a whole

0:52:02.880,0:52:07.520
bunch more information than about
everyday life and a new perspective

0:52:07.520,0:52:12.720
than they had done before. I was talking to people
at Google in fact, just earlier this week about

0:52:13.520,0:52:18.560
work they're doing to study misinformation using
anthropology techniques and conspiracy theorists,

0:52:19.120,0:52:23.600
and last year they went or two years ago they
went out to places like Idaho to meet them face to

0:52:23.600,0:52:29.680
face as anthropologists to study them; now they're
doing it through video platform and again they get

0:52:29.680,0:52:34.560
different sets of insights in that different
formula so you can do it but it's not easy and

0:52:35.520,0:52:40.640
certainly the anthropology world - like everywhere
else - is having to change right now as a result.

0:52:42.480,0:52:48.320
So we have about eight minutes left I'm going to
break the rule that my producers have told me,

0:52:48.320,0:52:53.440
 we're told to never mention the time of
day or even the day of week or the date but today

0:52:53.440,0:52:58.880
is May 25th and two things happened - one a year
ago today and the other thing happening today.

0:52:58.880,0:53:03.520
A year ago this is the killing of George
Floyd and obviously that's way too big a

0:53:03.520,0:53:09.680
topic for us to deal here, however Guillermo's
question from Colombia I think speaks a little

0:53:09.680,0:53:14.560
bit to this: the motivations of companies for
diversity and inclusion usually comes from

0:53:14.560,0:53:20.560
economic or marketing regulations, what's your
opinion of this from an anthropological lens?

0:53:22.160,0:53:24.720
Very fair point, there's a
lot of box ticking going on,

0:53:25.600,0:53:29.360
there's a lot of corporate executives going yikes
we're going to do something and there's an awful

0:53:29.360,0:53:38.000
lot of hypocrisy, green washing, what
I call woke washing, reputation washing etc etc,

0:53:38.000,0:53:40.880
and you know one of the things that we happen
to do at Moral Money, I should say that Moral

0:53:40.880,0:53:46.720
Money with a platform I created two years ago 
because I could see this area of social silence

0:53:46.720,0:53:51.040
in the sense that there wasn't a lot of
mainstream media coverage of sustainability

0:53:51.760,0:53:56.560
and I thought they should be and- Moral
Money calls out a lot of the woke washing and

0:53:56.560,0:54:03.040
green washing because it's out there for sure
however we try and call it out in a - I won't say

0:54:03.040,0:54:09.360
forgiving way - but a kind way, sometimes a whimsical
way because the very fact that companies feel the

0:54:09.360,0:54:16.320
need to even engage in box ticking or woke washing
is itself quite remarkable because it reflects the

0:54:16.320,0:54:21.680
way the zeitgeist overall has changed. Again,
one of the things that anthropology stresses

0:54:21.680,0:54:28.320
is that you need to look at the entire zeitgeist
and the definition of what is acceptable discourse

0:54:28.320,0:54:34.240
and see how that changes over time and to look at
the - what Pierre Bourdieu, a French anthropologist

0:54:34.240,0:54:38.640
called the Doxa - it's really important to
think about that and the Doxa - the framework

0:54:38.640,0:54:44.560
for reference - has really changed in recent years,
and companies now know that if they don't actually

0:54:45.120,0:54:53.920
embrace that new Doxa they will suffer. And it's
funny how language and group patterns and rituals

0:54:53.920,0:54:59.600
and behaviour and thinking can all intersect and
reinforce each other because the reality is that

0:55:00.160,0:55:04.800
even if something like talking about
environmental or diversity issues starts

0:55:04.800,0:55:10.480
off with a box ticking exercise
that is full of self-deception or hypocrisy

0:55:11.280,0:55:16.960
if that language changes over time, little
by little ideas of what's acceptable practice

0:55:16.960,0:55:22.640
shifts too, and then practice changes as
well in a very subtle way, and so

0:55:23.200,0:55:29.120
yes, reputation washing is there, yes some of
it is hypocritical, yes it should be called out,

0:55:29.680,0:55:33.840
but don't necessarily discount it because
actually that's having an impact as well.

0:55:34.640,0:55:41.440
I guess this is the old fake it until you are
it concept. Rituals matter; anthropologists

0:55:41.440,0:55:46.800
take rituals very seriously. Absolutely. Well,
there's a ritual happening today on May 25th

0:55:46.800,0:55:52.880
which is a corporate vote at ExxonMobil and 
in your book you profile Bernard Looney, 

0:55:53.440,0:55:58.880
and you also talk about you profiled him in Moral
Money recently but maybe we're going

0:55:58.880,0:56:05.360
from the book to what's going on right now,
so this landmark activist move to unseat

0:56:05.360,0:56:11.840
some of the directors of ExxonMobil is 
part of the the tale that Moral Money is telling

0:56:11.840,0:56:16.560
so we don't know what's going to happen 
with this vote and maybe it doesn't matter.

0:56:16.560,0:56:21.120
I also note that it's down to three index fund
providers I think you have noted that in your 

0:56:21.120,0:56:26.800
story, Vanguard, Black Rock and State Street, will
probably determine what happens so - both with

0:56:26.800,0:56:33.600
your Financial Times hat on and your Anthro Vision
head - on help readers ... or help listeners

0:56:33.600,0:56:38.080
understand what they should be looking for when
they see the news that comes out of ExxonMobil's

0:56:38.640,0:56:44.160
shareholder vote later today, and more generally
what you're seeing in the oil and gas sector.

0:56:44.160,0:56:49.040
Well Peter that's such a great question because
I say if there was ever a tale that indicates why

0:56:49.040,0:56:54.640
corporate CEOs need an anthropology perspective,
it is indeed Exxon because I've known

0:56:54.640,0:57:00.000
some of the senior leaders there for a bit and
for so many years they knew that there

0:57:00.000,0:57:05.520
were these hippie weirdo activists in their eyes
who were campaigning over climate change issues,

0:57:06.080,0:57:11.280
they just discounted them and it never occurred
to them to try and see the world through their

0:57:11.280,0:57:17.840
eyes or to actually even take them that seriously -
now that's true of most oil and gas companies,

0:57:17.840,0:57:22.320
it's true of most CEOs - I mean it goes back
to the issue about being cloistered in your own

0:57:22.320,0:57:26.240
corporate office or basically being too 
damn busy to break out of tunnel vision.

0:57:26.800,0:57:33.280
Some have tried, I mean I actually give a hat
tip to Bernard Looney at BP, who a few years

0:57:33.280,0:57:39.600
ago did try to go out and spend time listening
to activists who were staging protests at the

0:57:39.600,0:57:44.720
bp headquarters and just try to listen to them
with an open mind to hear what they have to say

0:57:44.720,0:57:49.680
and try and see the world through their eyes; he
didn't agree with all of it, certainly Bernie's

0:57:49.680,0:57:53.920
made plenty mistakes over the time and it was easy
for him to do that because he came in fresh into

0:57:53.920,0:57:58.720
the company so I'm not holding him up as 
a paragon of listening per se, but he certainly

0:57:58.720,0:58:03.280
took a different stance from many other oil and
gas companies including the Exxon leadership.

0:58:04.000,0:58:09.520
And the reality is that the Exxon
leadership now is suddenly waking up and realizing

0:58:10.080,0:58:15.120
that two things; firstly that they're not in a
great position to understand the climate activists

0:58:15.120,0:58:20.880
or engage with them or win much credibility from
them, and secondly, because they haven't been

0:58:20.880,0:58:24.480
looking closely at what's been happening on the
ground they hadn't realised the degree to which

0:58:24.480,0:58:28.800
the climate activists are essentially teaming
up with other types of activists which are more

0:58:28.800,0:58:33.760
mainstream financiers and have more
clout and that's really what's going on -

0:58:34.320,0:58:39.920
it pays to listen and it pays to see the world
through someone else's eyes, even if you

0:58:39.920,0:58:46.480
seem to be extraordinarily powerful. So in closing
let me do somebody else's eyes for a moment. In

0:58:46.480,0:58:50.800
another environment, Gillian, you know I'm
stepping down as Dean in a few weeks and I would

0:58:50.800,0:58:56.080
have invited you to come speak to our students
maybe at the end of their programme so had we had

0:58:56.080,0:59:01.360
that luxury and you'd be giving them their
advice about what they should do, maybe what they

0:59:01.360,0:59:07.200
should draw from Anthro Vision or whatever else,
what's your valedictory remarks to them what what

0:59:07.200,0:59:13.520
advice would you give these young people? Well two
pieces, firstly embrace the anthropologist mindset

0:59:13.520,0:59:19.680
of trying to immerse yourself periodically in the
mindset of someone who seems different from you,

0:59:19.680,0:59:25.360
not just to gain empathy for somebody else which
you need in a globalised world, but also to look

0:59:25.360,0:59:29.840
back at yourself more critically and see your own
blind spots. I can't stress how important that is.

0:59:30.560,0:59:34.480
And then from a perspective of someone that
has nothing to do with anthropology per se

0:59:34.480,0:59:41.680
but it is kind of interlinked, recognise the 20th
century idea about career ladders is out of date.

0:59:41.680,0:59:48.000
Today - to quote Cheryl Sandberg - 'it's more like a
jungle gym'. In my own career I've gone up

0:59:48.000,0:59:52.400
downwards, sideways, swung around the edges and
then come back and then try to bounce back

0:59:53.680,0:59:59.440
and that's the way that most careers are today,
and that can seem quite scary at times but it's

0:59:59.440,1:00:06.000
also very exciting but it's also why we have to
keep an open mind and stay curious and always

1:00:06.000,1:00:10.560
remain ready to listen to others and realise
that the way that you see the world may not be

1:00:10.560,1:00:16.320
the only or even the most effective way. What an
incredible gift to my students thanks so much. So

1:00:17.040,1:00:21.840
we're just about a time out of time I'm afraid, and
before I thank Gillian for her time and her wisdom

1:00:21.840,1:00:26.720
today, I just want to hope that everybody will join
us for our next Leadership in Extraordinary Times

1:00:26.720,1:00:32.080
event, it promises to be - sorry for the pun - a high
octane discussion featuring the boss of Mercedes

1:00:32.080,1:00:37.200
Formula One team and the president and CEO of
Petronas - the petrochemical firm that backs them -

1:00:37.200,1:00:42.720
that's a week from today on June 1st at UK time
two o'clock don't miss them, but Gillian to you,

1:00:42.720,1:00:48.320
thank you so much for giving me the privilege
of reading your book, big plug here everybody,

1:00:48.320,1:00:54.000
great book before it comes out on June 8th
and for spending this hour with me and with all

1:00:54.000,1:00:58.320
of our listeners and for holding up a mirror
to the world through which your reporting and

1:00:58.320,1:01:03.600
your writing helps us better understand ourselves.
So for that gift Gillian, thank you so very much.

1:01:04.400,1:01:08.400
Thank you very much indeed, I really appreciate
you taking the time to talk about it and good luck

1:01:08.400,1:01:12.640
as you look at business schools
and work out how to pass forward, so thank you.

1:01:14.160,1:01:23.840
All right thanks so much everybody have a good day.

1:01:52.480,1:01:52.980