On the Brink

I've been interviewed a lot lately! Happily, they've all focused on the topics I love sharing about: my new book, Rethink: Smashing the Myths of Women in Business, the challenges women and minorities face in the workplace, Blue Ocean Strategy, female entrepreneurs, the Simon Initiative, culture change, and of course, anthropology. So is there an underlying theme to these articles, which I share below? Yes. I would have to say that it is time to make change your friend. We've been through a pandemic. Millions have lost their jobs and businesses and are now trying to imagine what's next. Women are fed up with bumping into old myths that tell them what they can and can't do. New markets are being opened up by clever entrepreneurs looking for unmet needs. In short, change is all around us, and it's not slowing down. Time to embrace it, not flee from it!

Photo courtesy of The Good Men Project

Ah, change...love it or hate it, it's inevitable. It comes whether you like it or not. That's why the best approach is not to resist change and do battle with it, but to find ways to make it your friend. This is the message of a recent article I wrote for The Good Men Project, entitled "Don’t Let Change Be a Stranger; How To Embrace It as Your New Best Friend." You can read it here.

Even before the pandemic, people did not like change. Change is pain, it literally hurts our brains to have to change. That's why our brains work so hard to resist change, preferring to stick to old habits and patterns. But with all the disruptions that the pandemic has brought, from work-life balance to childcare to online schooling to endless Zoom meetings, our previously predictable world has been turned upside down. What to do?

When I started writing this blog, I was interested in how schools use anthropology and its observational research methods. I wasn't curious about how schools were teaching anthropology, but how they applied its theory, methods and tools to help address the significant issues of climate and cultural changes. As I scanned the research trying to find how anthropologists help schools change, grow and improve, I came to the realization that anthropologists are not being used to help schools. But quite frankly, they should be!

So how can anthropologists help our schools?