In an age when the business world is dominated by technology and data analysis, financial journalist Gillian Tett presents a unique strategy for success: businesses can revolutionize their understanding of behaviour by studying consumers, markets, and organizations through an anthropological lens.
In this video excerpt from her Rotman Speaker Series event, author and journalist Gillian Tett shares the insights from her book Anthro Vision. Introducing Gillian are Rod Lohin, executive director of the Michael Lee-Chin Family Institute for Corporate Citizenship, which hosted the session, and Rotman professor Laura Doering.
Amid severe digital disruption, economic upheaval, and political flux, how can we make sense of the world? Leaders today typically look for answers in economic models, Big Data, or artificial intelligence platforms. Gillian Tett points to anthropology—the study of human culture. Anthropologists train to get inside the minds of other people, helping them not only to understand other cultures but also to appraise their own environment with fresh perspective as an insider-outsider, gaining lateral vision.
Anthropology makes the familiar seem unfamiliar and vice versa, giving us badly needed three-dimensional perspective in a world where many executives are plagued by tunnel vision, especially in fields like finance and technology. Tett's new book Anthro-Vision offers a revolutionary new way for understanding the behaviour of organizations, individuals, and markets in today’s ever-evolving world.
Gillian Tett chairs the editorial board, US, for the Financial Times and writes columns for the world’s leading newspaper covering finance, business and the political economy. She has been named British Journalist of the Year, Columnist of the Year and Business Journalist of the Year in the UK and won two Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing awards in the US. Tett is the author of a number of popular business books, including Anthro-Vision: How Anthropology Can Explain Business and Life.
Laura Doering is assistant professor of Strategic Management and fellow at the Michael Lee-Chin Family Institute for Corporate Citizenship at the Rotman School.
Rod Lohin is executive eirector at the Rotman School's Michael Lee-Chin Family Institute for Corporate Citizenship.