I am reading through Tom Kelley’s book The Ten Faces of Innovation, which outlines ten "personas" that organizations need in order to "beat the Devil’s advocate" and create a culture of creativity and innovation. I’ll be posting a few thoughts on each of the ten personas, and how they might relate to church leadership in postmodern cultures.
Tom wants to make sure we understand that the ten personas are not "inherent personality traits or ‘types’ that are permanently attached to one (and only one) individual on the team." They are more like roles that team members play. They are functional instead of positional.
The first persona Tom discusses is the Anthropologist. It is one of the "learning" personas (the others being Experimenter and Cross-pollinator).
Anthropologists are observers of human behavior. They see things the rest of us don’t see because we look away too soon, or we simply take things for granted, not seeing problems because we think "That’s just the way things are." Anthropologists have an ability to look at people and situations with a "beginner’s mind". That is, they are able to set aside what they "know", what tradition tells them, or even what their own preconceived notions are, and observe with a truly open mind. They do not come to conclusions quickly, they observe and let all the ramifications play out in front of them. They are genuinely interested in other people, and have a love for watching and talking to people that cannot be faked.
Anthropologists are concerned with the experience of the end-user, and will often go to great lengths to discover what the actual experience is for the end-user. They understand that often when people are asked questions, they give an ideal answer instead of an answer that reflects reality (for example, when asked about eating habits, almost everyone will say they eat better than they actually do), so Anthropologists know how to ask the right kinds of questions and be in the right kinds of situations to observe the truth of the matter, always with the goal of improving the experience of the end-user. Like Margaret Mead, they understand that fresh discoveries can be made simply be spending lots of time "in the field", observing people’s normal lives and seeing things that everyone else has overlooked.
Anthropologists know that paying attention to the small things pays off big-time. In the book Tom talks about a soft-drink company in Poland that used their inner-Anthrolpologist to sell more soft drinks to people waiting in train stations. They observed that in the minutes before trains arrived, people would stand on the platform, look over their shoulder at the drink kiosk, glance at their watch, then scan the platform for the incoming train. They realized these people were torn between wanting something to drink and not wanting to miss their train. So they quickly prototyped and installed new drink machines in the train stations with huge clocks on the face of the machine, so passengers could watch the clock and get something to drink. Sales shot up in the train stations.
A few thoughts on how Anthropologists can function in churches…
Sometimes we can become so familiar with the way we do things, and even the way our buildings look, that we become immune to how those practices and environments affect those who come into them for the first time. As leaders, we need to become and/or cultivate and encourage Anthropologists who can see our sanctuaries and foyers with fresh eyes, experience our services with a "beginner’s mind", and notice how newcomers are interacting with people and experiencing our church community.
I took an anthropology course in college, and one of the cultures we studied was that of the Nacirema. The culture was described as incredibly narcissistic, with much of the fruit of their economic labor going toward the human body, "the appearance and health of which loom as the dominant concern in the ethos of the people." The paper went on to describe the various rituals these natives engage in, and the students were mostly interested, if not a bit revoted by some of the practices. After reading this "case study" the professor revealed that it actually described modern Americans. It helped us see the strangeness of some of our most common practices. Here’s a passage that describes how we brush our teeth every day:
The daily body ritual performed by everyone includes a mouth-rite. Despite the fact that these people are so punctilious about care of the mouth, this rite involves a practice which strikes
the uninitiated stranger as revolting. It was reported to me that the
ritual consists of inserting a small bundle of hog hairs into the
mouth, along with certain magical powders, and then moving the bundle
in a highly formalized series of gestures.
It’s often difficult to see what is right in front of us. That’s why we need Anthropologists.
An example of how the Anthropologist persona can help us: We often unwittingly turn people off through the use of "insider language". How many religious phrases do we use that automatically exclude those who don’t understand what we’re talking about? Do we talk about things like "anointing" and "calling" without explaining ourselves? I’m not saying we necessarily shouldn’t use those kinds of terms, just that we ought to think through how we come across to people who don’t understand those terms at all. When Paul preached the gospel to Jews, he would talk about Jesus being the fulfillment of the story of Israel, he would quote the Hebrew Scriptures and explain how Jesus fulfilled them. But when he spoke with the pagans on Mars Hill, he didn’t use the Hebrew Scriptures at all, because it wouldn’t have made any sense to them. He had to use different language, and a different starting place to preach the gospel to people who didn’t care about the story of Israel.
In the same way, we need to do some anthropological research to find out what people are actually hearing in our worship services, what they are seeing in our sanctuaries and auditoriums and classrooms and foyers, and how we are coming across in our conversations and sermons.
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