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 most 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