(calm upbeat music)
- [Jan Voiceover] I'm Jan English-Lueck.
This YouTube video series
profiles workplace anthropologists
whose work directly influence
their own workplace processes.
The video series is part of a workshop in
The Business Anthropology
Matters Initiative.
As people increasingly
spend their waking hours
at workplaces, anthropologists need
to understand those experiences.
The practitioners profiled here have used
anthropological skills
to access, document,
analyze, and relate the lives
of workers and the
businesses that employ them.
Organizations employ
anthropologists to understand
a variety of worker related
issues within organizations.
Ranging from design to strategy.
These interviews explore the practical,
theoretical and ethical issues that must be 
resolved to do workplace anthropology.
- [Paul Voiceover]
In my current work as a workplace 
anthropologist is in design. Of course 
I have done applied anthropology in program 
evaluation in first nation communities.
And also I have used anthropology as an 
archaeologist as well. So I have had a few 
areas I have done. So when I did my PhD at 
the University of Toronto I did it in archaeology.
and anthropology. I was interested in 
indigenous peoples. And when I finished that in 
2001 I applied for work as a consultant
doing historical research on residential schools. 
And from there I met people who opened me 
up to opportunities to volunteer to do program 
evaluation on land claims for indigenous 
peoples. Doing field work in the remote north---
northern Canada,  that led to opportunities to 
do research on everything from marketing to 
job programs and further archaeological 
 
work to help do clearances for heritage for  
businesses that are developing land in Ontario. 
And those experiences of course happened 
because people asked "can you do this?" And I 
would apply and build that up and I had my 
own business running these sorts of operations.
So the anthropology side
was program evaluation, the archeology side 
was doing heritage  assessments
for companies that wanted to develop land,
like housing developments and the like.
And then, I started to
be interested in design,
because I've taught as a
adjunct  at Carlton University
for a long time in anthropology.
I taught a course, a third
year course, I still teach
in Design called Context of the Product,
which looks at the human side of design.
And but he said to me, you
should do a Masters of design.
You'd be a natural for it.
So I went back to
school, and it was there,
that I had a great experience
learning about design.
And then I met Ryan Hum,
who was then working for
the innovation hub, and he said, you know,
we use design for service design.
And that was my first exposure to it.
And I realized it wasn't just about making
physical products, but also services.
And suddenly I saw a place
where my anthropology,
and my other experiences
might come into one place.
And when he asked me to
join his team at Immigration Canada,
IRCC, Immigration Refugees
and Citizenship Canada now,
I jumped at the chance.
And I've been working there
for the past several months
and really enjoying the work.
Well right now I've
worked, my formal title is,
in government, in
Canadian Government speak,
I'm in project
administration, but my title
is Strategic Advisor,
Design Anthropologist.
So the work that I do, is basically,
I work with a Multi-Disciplinary team,
which I'll describe when
we get to that question.
And what I do, is that I
help support, providing the,
I like to call it connecting the dots.
So looking at the broader
perspective of things.
So when we're looking
at design for services,
sometimes I bring in those
anthropological concepts
to explain how things change.
I do a lot of research, academic research,
and other types of research
and bring it to the table.
And then I also participate
of course in the actual work
of doing the design.
So everything from doing
the journey mapping,
doing the personas, helping
to facilitate the fieldwork.
But my role is sort of
to pinch hit in there,
but also provide that qualitative
ethnographic fieldwork
experience because I have
many years of experience
doing that in a variety of contexts,
so that's what I bring to the table.
But then of course other things happen.
So we kind of, although we
each have our expertises,
we kind of overlap,
because we have to be able to communicate.
So we end up kind of, I have,
people get a little more
anthropological, I get a
little more designer full.
And it kind of, we meet in the middle.
The design is a strong background.
We have a few people, so some
are, one's a product designer,
so an engineer and a product designer.
Another is a graphic designer.
Another is a proto-type
designer, what we would call
someone who's extremely
good at doing divergent thinking so someone 
who uses creating services and products to 
expand how you think about it. Others 
backgrounds are in social work.  Interior design
Visual communication.  We have a data 
scientist whose experience with both qualitative 
and quantitative research
coming from a military background where he 
worked before so he provides that academic 
rigor on that perspective. And of course myself
I provide the qualitative anthropological 
perspective. And so we all have different 
disciplines and yet we find that after a while 
We start to talk and because of the nature of 
the work we intersect. 
And sometimes some of us are more involved 
in some aspect because it is our area of 
expertise and other times others
But, ...we kind of pull together... for a particular 
project and just even bounce ideas
off each other. So the roles kind of shift.
It's a very flat kind of organization
where we work. I don't want to say sector,
but that's not what it is.
Our directive or something.
And it's a very flat kind of structure,
it's not a hierarchical structure,
so it's anybody, pinch hits,
to help make things to come together.
Today we were talking about,
we were working on a project
to look at settlement services
for newcomers to Canada.
And one of the two things
that I pointed out,
is they said that first of
all, I said, one of the things
you need to do if you're bringing people
through this process, is
that there are several stages
where people just don't
know what to do next.
They're uncertain, they're
basically in a liminal state
to draw on Turner and Van Gennep.
And of course as you
know, ritual processes
we use ritual as a technology
to help people get through
from one status to
another, to be separated,
and then be reintegrated into society.
If you create those
touchstones for people,
those periods of uncertainty
are still going to be there,
but you feel less afraid,
because you have a way
of integrating that way of thinking.
And when I brought that into the table,
and they went, that's how we're going to,
and they say, that helps
us to connect the dots.
And they got really excited, they said,
that's why we hired an anthropologist.
We like, and then that helped
other people think about,
and then we talk and then,
so it really kind of blends into that.
And they view my
anthropological experience
and my research experience
as extremely valuable.
As they view everybody's experience.
It's a very positive
environment, very positive.
But how we work with them, is
typically we bring people in,
we show them what we're
doing, they get very excited,
and then take it to the upper management.
The IRCC is taking a very serious approach
to using design and design
research and other disciplines
to help really change how they do things.
And the organization
really emphasizes that.
They work on first name basis with people,
and they, the things
you develop they bring
right to the minister, and
things get implemented.
So it seems to be a very positive
and forward thinking environment.
And to give you an example
when I started there,
people on the 16th floor of
a tower in downtown Ottowa.
All of us, the workers,
we all get the cubicles by the windows.
All of the management, get
windowless offices at the center.
And they said we do that on purpose,
because you're most important.
That's the attitude they have.
So for me as an anthropologist,
the first thing I went, very interesting.
Obviously there's a chain of command
and people have to sign
off to authorize you know,
research money and all that kind of thing.
But they really taken it seriously. From my 
perspective in the few months that I have been 
there it seems like they are very keen on
engaging with people, listening seriously to 
ideas. They have even implemented a 
blueprint 2020 plan
Where any employee can suggest things to 
improve services, and then the people who 
participate in our design challenges can then
take those and they are the ones who get to 
evaluate it and senior management goes if 
other people  in the dept. think it is a good idea 
Not the top people but the people who actually 
work with it, they'll endorse it. Well, what the 
design challenge is
what we do is because we don't
just come in as consultants
basically to come in and
change how people do things.
What we want to do, of course,
and this is the approach
that in our, one of the names
we have for our division
is Client Experience Service Branch.
But we also give it a
shorthand of pure six.
And we just use that name for now.
But what it is is that, our
goal is to have culture change.
So it's not just about of
course helping to create
better service design, but
it's also helping people
within the organization to do it.
So what we do in the Settlement
and the Design challenge,
there's been two before.
This one is on Settlement design.
Dealing with how we deal with newcomers
including refugees and
permanent residents of Canada.
And how, what problems they encounter.
And so what they've done,
is they took from IRCC,
they took from across the organization,
from communications, from
policy, and from other branches
and they pulled these people
together, they're both from
the head office in Ottowa, the
Windsor and Toronto offices
and Vancouver and Surrey offices as well.
And brought everyone together,
to do field work in Toronto,
Kingston and in Vancouver
and Surrey in British Columbia.
And in all those cases to
help people from these various
parts of the organization to do fieldwork,
to interview service
organizations, refugees,
other newcomers, other organizations
that work with newcomers,
to see what people really experience.
What people find that works really well,
and what doesn't work well.
What helps them move forward into Canada,
what holds them back.
And that experience of a week of fieldwork
was very very emotional,
and very powerful.
Many people heard very tough things.
Both about their government,
and about the people
trying to make it in Canada.
And that experience,
pulling together as teams,
where people who even
were each other's bosses,
nope those titles are
gone, we remove all that.
And everyone works together.
Then they come back,
and in the second week
we do analysis where we use
techniques like the KJ technique
And teach people how to
analyze all of that qualitative
data that they recover from their notes.
And then to think about how to articulate
the problems that they're seeing.
And then now, in the fourth
week, they're going to be
working on creating
proto-types or solutions
that then they can present
to senior management and say,
here's where things are falling down.
And here's how we might do a better job.
And the reason we do this is because
those people who participate in the
service design challenges, number one,
they then become alumni.
So they bring back their
ideas and they're the ones
when those 20/20 blueprint
ideas are promoted,
they're the ones who get to evaluate them.
Because now they have design experience.
They're also the ones who then bring back
what they've learned to
their various branches
and directorates where
people are eager to hear,
and they bring back what they've learned.
And the big thing is they learn that
government can be changed.
Policy, rules, they're all made up.
They're important, but
they're constructed, right?
Like almost everything about
human cultures is constructed.
And it can be changed,
and we can change it.
Yes it takes time because it's difficult,
but it can be done.
And so what that does, is that
infuses this cultural change.
It's a group of people at a time,
but that helps to increase
what they call buy-in,
but also it helps to
produce people seeing,
these are techniques that people
use to help solve problems.
And that problems can be solved.
And that's all part of
this, so that's why,
even though it's much
harder to work with people
who are not experienced,
you have to train, you
have to bring people in,
yet it's very richly rewarding.
Oh I had a fair amount,
even though I had just started in May,
on the team, I had a fair amount because
one of the members of our team, Norhan,
she was taking the lead on creating our,
basically our, what we
call the design cookbook.
But it was basically
taking, you've probably seen
the different types of techniques
from like companies like
IDEO and others talking about how to do
design thinking and design challenges.
But we created our own,
we took elements of it
and then just explained it in
a slightly clearer fashion.
And I was in charge of providing
of course the ethnographic
research component.
So how to do, how to do, take field notes,
how to do semi-structured interviewing.
And all through the report, actually,
all of us sat and we went
through all of the things
we were going to be
doing in the challenge,
and said okay what do
you think about this?
What do you think we should,
so we had, each of us had
a fair amount of input
while respecting, of course
the need to have Toronto,
Kingston, Vancouver and Surrey
have to be the locations
because that's where
they had partnerships,
you know that kind of stuff.
But I would say that we
had a fair amount of input.
In fact, I right off the bat
had some input into writing
those parts I mentioned, the
semi-structure interviewing
and those parts that went
right into our design manual
that we've developed to serve as
a guide for future design challenges.
So right off the bat there
was some of that input.
And again, since we've done it now,
I've had some further suggestions.
And so Ryan has said, yes, we're
going to look at this again,
and go how can we do it better next time?
And again, we'll all have input into that.
Right off the bat it's
setting up expectations
because of the fieldwork
component for example,
setting up expectations
of how many interviews
you could put into a typical day.
One of the things that we
found is that we put in
a lot of material.
For example, in one day, we
went from 8:00 in the morning,
until 10:00 at night.
Because we were at an evening
event with the LGBTQ community
through what's called the
519 in Toronto that services
refugees and newcomers who are LGBTQ+.
And it was a fantastic
day, it was awesome,
but everyone was, because
it's a lot of fieldwork right?
If you're going 12, 14 hours a day,
paying attention and writing notes
on what everybody is saying,
and you know this from experience.
You're done, you're beat.
So in that week, we did a
lot of contact... people were 
Just constantly going.
So that was a logistical
thing, like figuring out
how many people to speak
to, and how to connect them.
And that was a practical,
that was something that we encountered.
Number one, the first place
where I saw it working,
was that, when I saw people
doing the field work,
people were hearing
experiences and some people,
of course were crying.
They could feel it, they
could see their own children,
they could see their own
things and they could say,
we can change this,
we've got to change this,
we've got to do something.
That I saw as a success because of course,
As anthropologists we engage with people,
yes we have to sort of
try to understand things,
and be a little bit
detached, but we engage.
We connect, we have to, we have to feel.
Otherwise we don't get it.
They got it, they saw it, they feel it,
'cause they felt it, they
touched it, they were there.
Even in a brief week, they got
so much out of the experience
that then they brought back of course,
with their respective experiences,
and they started to think differently.
The other time I saw them get it,
was when we went through all the analysis,
but it was in the last
day of the analysis,
at the end of the third
week, they all acted out
the scenarios, so here's
what it's like when a refugee
comes and tries to deal with
the service organization.
Here's our IRC act.
And they act it out,
the roles of government
and all those parts.
And when they did that, they nailed it.
They saw, everyone laughed, went oh.
All at the same time, they saw
and they connected the dots.
By acting out, by deliberately
acting out what they were seeing.
They explained things in a
way the text just couldn't.
They got it.
And it was that moment when
they started designing.
It was that moment that I saw them going,
I think you got it.
And we could see the connections.
So that, that for me made me
really say that's important
that's got to happen sooner next time.
So you know, and all those things
so those were the two
things that really helped me
to see the people kind
of connecting the dots.
And also help them to sort of
start thinking differently.
It changed them.
And to watch how they're even now,
when we're talking to them
now, 'cause some of them
are back at the main headquarters.
They're not talking the same way.
They're starting to engage.
And they're improving what
they see and how they see it.
So they stopped thinking in rigid lines,
and they start realizing
the fluidity of experience,
they see the human not just the policy.
They really care, and
they really want to help.
A lot of the people do.
So that spirit is there.
It's just, I think, giving them the tools
so they actually can help.
Through the design challenge,
in terms of ethics, we
had a disclaimer forms
for people that if they
wanted to participate
or not participate, they
could stop at any time.
That sort of thing.
The only thing that we saw as,
gee, I don't know for an ethical,
many of the people taking
the notes, the people
that participated in the design
challenge were very concerned.
They said people came and
told us their stories.
And we have an obligation
to honor their stories.
And that's what we've put at the forefront
of this design, is when
we create the personas
and the archetypes to sort of show,
here's someone who is a refugee,
and we give them a name,
it's not the actual person's name,
but it's an amalgamation
of some of the things that
these key people have.
The quotes and the stories
that they bring, we show.
Everyone so far has been
very pleased to see that
when we're talking about this,
when we're going to create a
video and we're going to show
management, we're going to
show, here's what's going on,
there will be those stories.
So that we're not missing anybody.
Or forgetting.
We're ensuring that we
catch everyone's story.
Because we didn't offer
money or anything to people,
but we did think, perhaps
later, if we're going to engage
and do this kind of work again,
we want to make sure that
we want to provide food
and other things to people to thank them
for sharing their stories with us.
That I found, that little bit
that line we have when we're applied.
Unless we're working directly
for the first nation,
sometimes we can worry, like
am I doing the right thing?
So fortunately for me
though I was never asked
to do anything that was the
wrong thing, if you will.
I wasn't asked to like testify
against the first nation
or things like that.
So for me I felt, okay I
can resolve this conundrum
because it's not severe, but
it is something I thought,
yeah, if you were to
look at that with serious
critical optics, that might be an issue.
And I'm sure there are
some anthropologists
who would have an issue with the work
I was doing because of that.
The first thing I would
tell them is number one,
I said you're here, because
you love anthropology.
I don't think people go
into anthropology typically
because they go, yeah you know what,
the benefits are awesome.
They're going into it because
they love the actual discipline.
You're fascinated by people.
So if you're there, already,
you're in the right place
if that's what's motivating you.
The second thing is figure
out what you find interesting.
Look at that.
When it comes to being applied though,
one of the ways is simply by
trying to engage with people.
So getting to know people in general,
is probably how you'll
break into an opportunity.
I had someone who was reaching out to
the anthrodesign group,
and asked about advice
on this sort of thing, and I reached out,
and that person got to
meet with a few people
a little bit of networking.
Because it really is
something, it seems to be,
that it's who you know.
That's how you tend to break
into doing applied anthropology.
At least in my experience.
So I think if someone wants
to do applied anthropology,
I guess my advice is do your schooling,
work with people, work with a non-profit,
work in a government office.
Do all sorts of jobs.
Get life experience.
When you do that, the opportunities
will present themselves.
But you have to get out and do things.
So you can't just sit in
the Ivory tower and say
look I'm going to go get a
Master's and then jobs will happen!
You also need to just go out and work.
And it will come.
There will be opportunities
for you to connect with people.
So that's the advice I would give.
Be patient.
(calm upbeat music)
