Before we attempt to answer that question, an important point: you're already "native". We are all part of one professional tribe or another, whether we are aware of it or not. Our membership in our tribe not only drives relatively innocuous cultural symptoms, such as our workday lingo, but even our model of the world and the people in it, including the other tribes we work with.
So, big deal, we're tribal. Hardly news. And isn't it perfectly natural? Yes. Blinding? Often.
If you came to Product Management via the business side, there was probably a time when you thought business success was about numbers. If you came to Product Management via the technology side, there was probably a time when you thought technology success was about technology. Now, if you've spent anytime as a Product Manager, you'll immediately recognize those ideas as quaint fallacies, and luxuriously naive. However you define your success in this challenging role, I'm certain that achieving it comes down to your interactions with people.
Mastering our interactions with people in the context of our role can be incredibly challenging, and oftentimes we can be afflicted with temporary delusions of competency in this area. Again, not entirely new news. But if it isn't news, then why do many of us invest so little into the deliberate study of the other tribes we rely on?
I'm fascinated by the challenge of professional tribal interactions and what it means in terms of becoming a better Product Manager. I believe, and have experienced, that it is powerful to "go native" with the tribes you need most, and to get beyond the cliches and stereotypes we often attach to them.
So as a complete and utter amateur in social anthropology, but with the encouragement and support of my actual anthropologist co-host (and our future guest bloggers and commentators), I invite you to "go native" to get smarter. What's the first step? Well, going "un-native" from your own tribe first, of course, and beginning to see other professional tribes with eyes less clouded by assumptions and judgment.
How do we start the conversation? In my next post, I'll talk about how non-anthropologist Product Managers such as myself can go "un-native" before attempting to go native.
The Anthropology of Product Management is a hugely rich topic. I hope you'll join Paula and me in an ongoing discussion about how digging into this topic can make us better at what we do.
Trevor Rotzien
the product manager
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So, big deal, we're tribal. Hardly news. And isn't it perfectly natural? Yes. Blinding? Often.
If you came to Product Management via the business side, there was probably a time when you thought business success was about numbers. If you came to Product Management via the technology side, there was probably a time when you thought technology success was about technology. Now, if you've spent anytime as a Product Manager, you'll immediately recognize those ideas as quaint fallacies, and luxuriously naive. However you define your success in this challenging role, I'm certain that achieving it comes down to your interactions with people.
Mastering our interactions with people in the context of our role can be incredibly challenging, and oftentimes we can be afflicted with temporary delusions of competency in this area. Again, not entirely new news. But if it isn't news, then why do many of us invest so little into the deliberate study of the other tribes we rely on?
I'm fascinated by the challenge of professional tribal interactions and what it means in terms of becoming a better Product Manager. I believe, and have experienced, that it is powerful to "go native" with the tribes you need most, and to get beyond the cliches and stereotypes we often attach to them.
So as a complete and utter amateur in social anthropology, but with the encouragement and support of my actual anthropologist co-host (and our future guest bloggers and commentators), I invite you to "go native" to get smarter. What's the first step? Well, going "un-native" from your own tribe first, of course, and beginning to see other professional tribes with eyes less clouded by assumptions and judgment.
How do we start the conversation? In my next post, I'll talk about how non-anthropologist Product Managers such as myself can go "un-native" before attempting to go native.
The Anthropology of Product Management is a hugely rich topic. I hope you'll join Paula and me in an ongoing discussion about how digging into this topic can make us better at what we do.
Trevor Rotzien
the product manager
I'm excited to see this post going up and I'm looking forward to reading it. Going native means more than adopting the customs, rituals, etc. of the group you are studying and this post helps illustrate that. I often use the opening scene from The Gods Must Be Crazy to illustrate the point -- what is trash from one cultural vantage point is a miraculous tool from another (hammer, grinder, scoop, water bottle, fire starter). This is exactly the point of the anthropological lens; that context and culture shape practices and beliefs even if we don't recognize this until we dive in and take a new, sometime confounding and sometime delightful, analytical perspective.
Interaction defines the human condition and the nature of culture. Brilliant assessment that this means understanding a group's cultural structure and worldview if you want to gain traction.
Nice piece -- I'm looking forward to seeing more. I would caution that "going native" potentially means becoming so enmeshed with the group that analysis and an etic view becomes difficult, but that may be overcomplicating things. The point that it's about learning the seen and unseen, the heard and unheard within a cultural group (and each department/function within a company is has its own cultural norms) being the key to success is spot on. Can't wait to read more as this blog progresses.
Thanks very much for your interest and insight! As the anthro-amateur in this blogging partnership with Paula, I have plenty of catching up to do, but I am hugely enthusiastic about applying anthropology ideas to the workplace. While we all "work with people", the Product Manager tends to have a higher frequency of exposure to (and a greater degree of dependency on) a higher diversity of professional tribes, hence this is the role that may benefit most from awareness of anthropology principles and their application at work. While Paula, and commentators such as yourself, can help keep the conversation enlightened by what is best theory and practice among actual anthropologists, I hope to bring an in-the-trenches perspective, and step through how anthropology can help other Product Managers in practical terms.
Talk about a core Product Management principle! One of my first PM managers told me although I had the title "product manager", I didn't actually have the capacity to make the hard and fast decisions. Everything was driven by data-based decisions involving key stakeholders. The key he told me was influence, you need to influence your tribe(s) in positive ways.
Peter, thanks for the comment. I do think most product managers find themselves in the situation of huge responsibility with little to no (official) authority. Where I see anthropology principles adding value is helping us get very deliberate and specific about the who, when and how of observing / empathizing with / recruiting / those other professional tribes that we so fundamentally rely on.