Corporate Anthropology

Corporate Anthropology Unearths Truths Of Workplace

Los Angeles Times

Many moons ago, while stalking ancient Mayan ruins in Central America, Karen Stephenson suddenly found herself at the wrong end of an automatic rifle.

The Harvard-trained anthropologist was traveling with colleagues in the war-torn region when renegade soldiers waylaid their jeep. In the sickening moments that followed, she said, ``If we'd panicked, they surely would have shot us.

``I can still feel the sweat on my forehead,'' said Stephenson, now a jet-hopping corporate consultant, during a frenetic 48-hour stopover in Los Angeles. ``I've had many life- threatening experiences in the jungles of Guatemala. But no more life- threatening than I've experienced in the corporate world.''

Sharpened by the vestige of a West Texas twang, it's a canny synopsis of her workplace world view. A former UCLA business professor, Stephenson has traded in her safari togs for designer labels, a Sony laptop and a Palm Pilot that must be on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

A Varied Clientele But she has kept her Mata Hari-like sense of adventure.

These days, the self-styled ``corporate anthropologist'' circles the globe preaching a sophisticated, yet plain- spoken, management gospel to a disparate clientele that at one time or another has included blue-chippers IBM, AOL Time Warner and Hewlett- Packard, plus the Pentagon, the CIA, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Police Department.

Her message? Next time you slip into your cozy office cubicle, don't forget to bring your hip boots.

The American workplace can be a swamp of betrayals, sneak attacks, feral co-workers, slash-and-burn bosses and other nasty surprises. That's why ``trust relationships,'' as Stephenson calls them, should be recognized and nurtured as the gold standard of successful, innovative organizations.

Although most institutions rely on hierarchies and office flow charts to measure employee interaction, Stephenson thinks there's a better way to determine how workers communicate and share vital information.

Using mathematical algorithms and customized software, she and her New York-based company, Netform International Inc., chart the below- the-radar social networks that shape white-collar environments.

The Secret Network Through confidential surveying and painstaking analysis, Stephenson and her 20-member staff attempt to determine a company's hidden molecular makeup by asking simple questions like:

* Who do you talk to?

* Who do you go to for expert advice, or a quick decision?

* Which old-timers know where the bodies are stashed?

* Which employees are creating information ``bottlenecks,'' bolstering their own power by keeping colleagues in the dark?

When collected and converted into graphic images, the resulting data resemble DNA strands, densely encoded with names, job titles and crisscrossing lines indicating personal connections.

``[Our findings] make executives very happy, because at last they can see what's really going on,'' Stephenson says, ``and it makes the rank and file very happy because they're finally getting recognized for the work they do.''

She says that we ignore these trust- based networks at our peril, because when they're not properly understood or used, everyone loses. Key employees aren't retained over time. Mentorship breaks down. Institutional memory seeps away. Manipulative blowhards who have the boss' ear get promoted over more talented, less visible rivals. Lacking the psychological safety net of trust, many employees grow afraid of taking risks.

Thus, Stephenson says, when people complain they don't get recognized for the work they do, they're usually right.

``They don't get recognized for the work they do because the work they do gets done at the tacit level,'' she says. ``Many people reorganize their companies all the time, and nothing ever changes. Too much misalignment is a bad thing. Before you know it, you've got `acquired organizational dysfunction syndrome.' We want to avoid that.''

This type of snappy, user-friendly insight has been boosting Stephenson's profile as a free-thinking corporate provocateur. With her nimble, bicoastal firm, she's out to redesign the global workplace, one corporate culture at a time.

And from Wall Street to Hollywood to Harvard, people are listening.

``She is kind of in a class alone,'' says Maria Leo, first vice president of human resources for Merrill Lynch, which has been working with Stephenson for several years.

At 49, Stephenson fully fits the part of a modern management guru: Gucci glasses, high-end, head-to-toe black, and short, bobbed hair, flatteringly gray.

Divorced for many years, Stephenson says she once told her former husband: ``My work is first, my child is second and you are third.''

Her son graduated from high school two weeks ago. That leaves his mother freer than ever to pursue what she calls her mission: to enable the ``strong'' to help the ``meek'' get their due in the workplace, while holding the ``weak'' - petty-minded obstructionists, back stabbers and incompetents - in check.

Drawing analogies with chemistry and anthropology, she contends that most organizations are marked by three recurring behavioral patterns.

Workers Fit Patterns These derive from three groups of archetypal workers known as ``hubs,'' ``gatekeepers'' and ``pulse takers.'' They are classified according to the nature and number of their ``trust relationships'' with colleagues.

Hubs are employees with the most direct ties to co-workers.

Gatekeepers are more self-aware versions of hubs. They enjoy serving as power brokers and tend to infuse information with their own agendas.

Pulse takers are the least visible employees. They observe and measure the state of the company and are widely trusted.

Perhaps the most famous pulse taker in history was the wily Italian courtier Niccolo Machiavelli, author of ``The Prince,'' a brilliantly cynical manual of managerial technique. Some employees may occupy several of these roles, or trade them as their careers evolve.

Mathematical Models Stephenson's research identifies the members of each group in a given organization. Then, using mathematical models first conceptualized by mathematical theorist Frank Harary and structural anthropologist Per Hage, she maps out her findings in interlocking graphs that are easier to decipher than they look.

What's striking is how similar these networks appear, whether depicting an Indian caste system, a corporate bureaucracy or a group of HIV-positive men.

Stephenson also has been winning converts in government and not-for- profit circles. Vice Adm. Dennis McGinn, deputy chief of Naval operations for Warfare Requirements and Programs at the Pentagon, credits a Netform analysis with breaking a bureaucratic logjam.

After surveying 2,200 Navy employees, Stephenson found Navy staffers, drowning in paperwork, were wasting time currying favor in order to get their memos moved to the top of their colleagues' in baskets. The affected departments have set up a Web- based routing system that lets employees swap information more easily and have input on tasks in progress.

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