Comment

Comment by John McCreery on September 24, 2009 at 6:26pm

Sinead, is the elephant in the room your focus on "selling my skills to customers," when what the company wants is sales for the company to which your skills may be incidental? The rainmaker's job is not to do the work but to find work that needs to be done and to create the confidence that the company can do it. Selling other people's skills may be far more important than selling your own.

Comment by Sinead Devane on September 24, 2009 at 5:15pm

yes, I have free reign of what times I use... they just measure my outcomes. Its a much healthier business focus!

I am aware that I need to add value by selling my skills to customers. I'm struggling to package myself and my skills such that the UK market want to buy! The firm I'm in is primarily aerospace, both public and private sectors, and is made up of engineers, and me. I am not an engineer, but have some expereince in design of learning programmes... and the general design cycle.

I feel like I'm perfectly poised to storm the UK market of *** something anthropologically helpful to customers ***, but I also feel blind to what I need to do to move forward. Whats the elephant in the room??

Comment by John McCreery on September 24, 2009 at 4:43pm

Sinead, what does the company sell? Who are its customers? How can you, with what you have learned and bring to the table as an anthropologist, improve the company's offerings in a way that increases sales? These are the critical questions.

There may also be a hint in something I was told by Kazuhiko Kimoto, the Senior Creative Director who hired me to work for one of Japan's largest advertising agencies. We were talking about one of the company's occasional efforts to enforce work rules, e.g. showing up at nine a.m. when most of the creative staff drifted in around noon. Kimoto-san said, "In our business there is only one rule. If the clients give the agency business because you are here, you can forget the other rules." That was one of the two best pieces of business advice I ever received.

Comment by Sinead Devane on September 24, 2009 at 3:52pm

so, i'm exploring what anthropologists can offer businesses. what can we do to help them increase their long term prospects and turn a profit? what can we do to help them achieve their myriad of objectives which all serve the primary aim to make money and keep their organisation running?
Having worked with a small firm in the UK for two years now, as a trainee associate, I am coming to the end of my contract and 'would' be offered a further role here if I 'added value'. At the moment I am on a research contract and am costing them to have me, so what can I do with my skill set that means the make money as a result of me being here?
My explorations and comparisons with other ethnopraphers in business find that anthropologists are often used as members of design teams who bring a focus on the user or the human aspect of the task. In that role, the anthropologist is dependant upon the prior existence of a team and contributes a part of the knowledge that is used to add value in some way. sometimes those teams design endproducts to deliver to the customer, sometimes they just report their findings and the customer can use them how they wish.
what do other anthropologists do in business? how do they/you contribute to a form such that you make more money for them than they use to keep you there?

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