Author: Bob Rosner

Dr. Karen Stephenson proves that anthropologists aren’t limited to studying primitivecultures. She is a professor of business at Imperial College at the Universityof London and CEO/president of NetForm, a New York-based corporate consultingfirm. Stephenson works inside complex corporations (including IBM, TRW, MerrillLynch, and J. P. Morgan), mapping and measuring relationships. By combining heranthropological observations with techniques derived from her work in chemistryand mathematics, she makes startling discoveries about how these organizationsreally work.

Before anthropology, you were a chemist. How did you end up applying thoseskills to the workplace?

As a quantum chemist, I was studying robust patterns (repeating and thereforepredictable patterns in chemical reactions and atomic degradation) that occurredin nature. At the same time, I was in charge of a laboratory with 200 people.I noticed that the chemists and physicists were bumping around in the laboratoryin patterns not unlike the ones I was observing in atomic and subatomic particles.The humans, just like the subatomic particles, created some combinations thatwere duds and some combinations that were highly explosive. I thought, my gosh,what am I seeing here? I wanted to combine anthropology with my chemistry andmath background, to better understand what I was seeing.

Can you give me a corporate example of how humans mimicked the particles?

An issue that is important to HR is how new hires are brought into the organization.When new hires come in, 80 percent of their time is ineffective. They’re bumpingaround in outdated processes, reading manuals that don’t make any sense andthat no one follows-essentially a random and, for the most part, inefficientwalk through the culture. We’ve learned that the pattern really changes whenthey are grouped with people in a network who can explain how work really getsdone.

What do you mean by “network”?

We tend to think organizations run according to organizational charts. I usedto call the organizational chart the “corporate lie.” I don’t sayit anymore because the organizational chart is a map of formal procedures andprocesses and does work in times of organizational stress. But humans are cantankerous,don’t follow rules, are naturally creative, and tend to step outside the lines.When they do, they create processes, behaviors, and habits that don’t followthe organizational chart. These are the knowledge networks that control howthings get done. If you took an X-ray of the organization, you’d see four kindsof key networks: the social network, the work network, the innovation network,and the expert network. Networks have their own code, their own way of working.

Talk more about the official and unofficial ways that things get done atwork.

The formal organizational chart gives you an indication of what the baselineis or what the legacy of the company is. But people always deviate and changefrom the legacy; that’s what causes organizations to change and to grow. It’sonly a bad thing if you don’t understand what’s really going on. It’s toughto see this when you are part of the culture of an organization. But if youcould fly at 50,000 feet above the organization, you’d see how the networksfunction and how information flows within the organization. The tools that wecreate help corporations to get this kind of perspective.

Can you give an example of why a network is so important?

I did a study just before, and another one a year after, a major corporate restructuring.The organization was very frustrated because they had a whole new organizationalstructure, but the quality and the quantity of work they were able to get donedidn’t change. After analyzing the networks, I discovered that all the samenetworks were still in place and in the same patterns from before the reorganization.The hierarchical chart may have changed, but the way the work got done didn’t.At another organization, the exact opposite thing happened. Key people left,and they took their networks with them. What remained was chaos.

Describe the patterns that you see within organizations.

Each network has a large number of informal leaders who control the ways informationis exchanged. These informal leaders tend to take on the role of hub, gatekeeper,or pulse-taker.

Tell us about hubs.

Hubs are folks who have a high number of direct ties to them and fit the analogyof a hub-and-spoke system. The hubs in a human system are typically very goodcommunicators and transmitters of knowledge and have the trust of the peoplethey work directly with. Since trust is like an underground utility line, youcan’t see it. That’s why you’ve got to dig beneath the surface to see hubs andhow they influence your culture.

Tell us about gatekeepers.

Hubs have a natural limitation: people can’t talk to 5,000 other peopleface-to-face. The most anyone’s been able to develop a trusting relationshipwith is 150; most people hover around 50. Organizations often have more peoplethan that, so gatekeepers are people who link the hubs together. A gatekeeperis the opposite of a hub. Instead of being connected to a lot of people, theyhave few, but strategic, connections that bring together disparate parts ofan organization. Gatekeepers, because they’re not connected to many people,are probably the most self-aware of all three positions. They know that informationfunnels through them and that they are in a position of power regarding thecontrol of that information.

 

So gatekeepers can do a lot of things to information, which can be goodand bad. They can color information; they can make it disappear; they canspray their personal bias like a patina on information and have it be forevercolored as it goes across the organization. If a gatekeeper holds on to informationin a negative way, he or she would be considered more of a bottleneck, andif a gatekeeper really moves information through, gets it to the right personon time, then he or she is considered a broker.

And finally we have the pulse-taker.

The pulse-taker is the least visible, the least intuitive, and to my mind themost interesting. Pulse-takers are indirectly connected to the greatest numberof people. Another way of saying it is that pulse-takers have the widest rangeand the deepest reach in an organization through the fewest paths. I often communicatethe role of a pulse-taker by recalling a famous pulse-taker in history, NiccoloMachiavelli. Machiavelli was a pulse-taker in the Italian court; he was unseenbut all-seeing. And he’s fascinated us for over 500 years. If you map his interactions,you can see that he was very indirectly connected but had his finger on thepulse of the organization. He knew what was happening.

So everyone is classified as a hub, gatekeeper, or pulse-taker?

Everybody has degrees of all three in them. Our research has allowed us to developalgorithms to identify all the roles that each person plays and to what extentthey play those roles at any one time in an organization.

So how can HR professionals apply these anthropological tools at work?

Here’s one example. Think about all the ways knowledge is passed on within anorganization: succession planning, mentoring, apprenticeship, coaching, etc.The more effectively you can use your hubs, gatekeepers, and pulse-takers totransfer knowledge, the more effective you can make your organization in managingand leveraging its own information for the customer in terms of products andservices.

How does your work help HR professionals?

HR, like anthropology, needs to use the skill of participant observation tolearn how to identify and observe informal leaders. But in the day-to-day workingsof the job, HR is often pulled this way and that way as they put out fires.They don’t have the time or distance to be that focused about what’s going on.That’s why our tools are valuable, because they are another pair of eyes thatcan help an organization better see its internal structure and what’s requiredto change how it works.

I’ve spent the last 10 years at UCLA building the world’s largest database ofinformation about corporate networks. We’ve developed a lot of proprietary algorithmsto cut through all the data we’ve been collecting. No one has the time to observeover several years the real structure of an organization. So I call my processthe “Cliff Notes of Culture.” It’s how you can get a fast and accurateread on a company’s culture. We can now take an organization’s networks andbenchmark it against other companies by size, industry, etc. We can also usethe science of networks that we’ve developed to advise organizations how torestructure, merge, acquire another company, etc.

Do you ever get tired of corporate corridors and long to work in a primitivesociety somewhere or go and study other primates, like Jane Goodall?

In fact, I am doing exactly what Margaret Mead, Jane Goodall, and others haveaccomplished in their respective areas. I wanted to study the modern corporation,which is a living system, like anything else. At first, more traditional anthropologistsasked me why I wanted to study corporations. It’s simple: because they’re strangeand exotic when viewed from afar. They’re as bizarre as anything I’ve ever studiedas an archaeologist in the land of the Maya in Yucatan and Guatemala or in theancient tombs of Egypt. It’s a “living archaeology” of a culture,and I get to help executives piece together the puzzle and find hidden treasuresof knowledge.

Workforce, September 2001, pp. 64-68 — Subscribe Now!

Have you ever wondered where all the Cold War spies went once the IronCurtain fell? Look no further than your own doorstep, because many spies are nowinvolved in corporate espionage. Adam Penenberg is the co-author of Spooked:Espionage in Corporate America (Perseus, 2000). We talked to him about the rolethat HR should play in keeping corporate secrets secret.

Corporate espionage is a relatively recent phenomenon, isn’t it?

Corporate espionage has been around forever. Now it’s just beenprofessionalized. In 1811 Francis Cabot Lowell traveled to England and rippedoff the plans for the Cartwright loom, which he memorized while touring afactory. With it, Lowell brought home the blueprints for America’s industrialrevolution.

 

What’s a more recent story of corporate espionage?

One of my favorite corporate spy stories occurred to my co-author, MarcBarry, who is a corporate spy. He was in a room in Silicon Valley meeting withthe inventor of a hot new technology, and there were five other “seedcapital investors” in the room asking questions about the technology andthe specs and everything else. And everyone in the room, Marc knew, was acorporate spy. They were all winking at each other.

 

How did a nice guy like you get started in corporate espionage?

I think that the espionage interest comes out of the hacking stories I didfor Forbes magazine and Forbes.com. I got into the idea of software piracy,music piracy on the Net, the special communities that have formed in cyberspacelike gangs, software gangs, and music-piracy gangs. They had a whole peckingorder. It was unbelievable. I became fascinated by hackers and the idea of theconcept of hacking being everywhere and no one being really aware of it. Thatkind of led me to corporate espionage — another area where it’s happening allthe time, yet people aren’t really aware of it.

 

What is the shortest speech you’d give to an HR person who doesn’t believethis is a problem for her company?

Well, a person or a company that takes that attitude I would call a victim.Odds are, if they have something worth stealing — whether it’s sales information, ormarketing information, or their budget, or new technologies — if they don’tthink it’s happening, they’re wrong. It is. Competitors may be looking at tryingto hire away whole sections of their company, or looking at their internaldecision making, or looking at their internal network. Just about every 500company is engaging in some sort of CI, or “competitive intelligence.”

 

How is competitive intelligence done?

Much of the time it is straightforward market research, done by professionallibrarian types, who dig up publicly available material like publications,market studies, etc. But sometimes companies hire people who break the law, orat least without breaking the law, work as spies. Many of them were trained bythe CIA and the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) and at the FBI. They’re formerthree-letter-agency people who are now working for companies. And what do theydo for companies but take the expertise, the skills, and the knowledge theylearned in their agencies and apply it to the private sector.

 

For example, sayI’m a mid-sized company in a field of very large companies that make sneakers. Ifind out that my competitor is about to do a massive national TV ad campaign fora new line of sneakers. Well, I was also planning on doing a national TV thing,but I realize, oh my god, I will get buried by them. So I’ve got to do adifferent strategy. That information may have prevented me from spending tens ofmillions of dollars on an ad campaign that wouldn’t work.

 

Are there any laws protecting companies from CI?

The Economic Espionage Act was passed by Congress in 1996, making it afederal crime to engage in economic espionage or stealing a trade secret. Atrade secret has to be defined, and you are the only one that can define it, youand your company. Now, for example, the formula for Coca-Cola is a trade secret.The source code for Microsoft is a trade secret. These are things that thecompanies go to great lengths to protect, and they’ve documented these steps,right? The information is only in the hands of a few people, and it can betracked, so that basically, you’ve done everything in your power to protect yourtrade secrets.

 

Doesn’t this solve the problem of corporate espionage?

No. Sales figures are not trade secrets. Factory production is not a tradesecret. The next advertising campaign that you’re going to run or inside scoopsor anything like that, everything, any piece of information like that, is not atrade secret. You have to define what your trade secrets are. CI involves, let’ssay, the acquisition of information that’s quite valuable to a competitor but isnot a trade secret.

 

Give me an example of how you can legally acquire valuable information abouta company.

Microsoft posts lists of every available job on its Web site. If you aretelling your competitors what jobs you’re looking to fill, that means they canfigure out what areas you’re looking to invest in R&D, and looking into newtechnologies and looking at areas you want to beef up. For example, if you had,all of a sudden, four new marketing jobs open, that could indicate that you’removing toward marketing some new product in a huge way, or you’re moving yourwhole marketing department in-house, perhaps. These are all pieces ofinformation that are valuable to know.

 

Take it a step further so that it’s not exactly illegal, but not exactlyethical, either.

I love this one. If you ever want to find disgruntled ex-employees of acompany who are specifically trained in a technology or skill that you want totarget as a journalist, or as a corporate spy, or as anyone who wants to findout, just type in the word “résumé,” the name of the company you’retargeting, and the technology you’re interested in. You get those three thingstogether in a search engine, and you’ll pull up a lot of résumés of people inthat area. It’s great to debrief them, because they love to dish about thecompany.

 

Can a company be protected from this sort of thing?

When you let people go, even if they are not taking information with themphysically, they are still taking information with them. You need to have youremployees sign non-disclosure agreements; that’s the first piece of advice Iwould give. That puts a legal sanction on them spilling information about thecompany for as long as you can make them do this. That’s how you can prevent alot of these problems. Also let people who work for you know that while you workfor this company, you are not allowed to spill this information over thetelephone. If someone calls you, you should patch this person over to thesecurity division, let’s say. There should be a structure and place for handlingrequests for information.

 

Is HR information that valuable?

Perhaps the information that is contained in the databases of an HRdepartment is not the kind of competitive intelligence that would give a rivalmuch of an advantage, okay? It may not even mean all that much to the peoplewithin the company if this information was breached. This is possible. Thequestion, though, is if you can breach this, then you can get in much deeper inthe company. So you have to be as responsible as the next person in making surethat you are not the hole that leaks the information from the company.

 

So numberone, it isn’t enough to say, “Oh, well, our information isn’t valuableenough to steal.” You still have a responsibility. Number two, I wouldargue that salary structure could be used by a competitor in a reallyinteresting way. I know of someone hired by a competitor to scope out a wholedivision of people at a Wall Street company. It was a major bank. They were ahotshot division that was really making money for the bank. There were about 30brokers or traders. So the spy was able to get a whole list of their names andtheir salaries, and then the competitor tried to hire the whole group away.

 

How is corporate espionage changing?

It’s been around a long time. What’s new about it is that you’re gettingprofessionals involved now. Guy Dubois, who was at the CIA for many, many yearsand now works in the private sector, told me, “Look, in the CIA, agents dowhatever they need to do to get the job done.” He just kind of says to me,”There are no limits to what an agent will do.” Now you have thesesame people who were trained by this organization engaged in competitiveintelligence. Are you telling me that they are not using the skills they learnedin the CIA? I would tell you that you’re crazy.

Workforce, April 2001, pp. 72-75SubscribeNow!

Most authors would be thrilled to sell 20,000 copies of a book during their lifetime. But Richard Bolles sells 20,000 copies of his book, What Color is Your Parachute? each month — and has done so for the last 25 years. Parachute was first published in 1970, and is currently published in 10 different languages. In 1995, the Library of Congress selected it for its list of “25 Books That Have Shaped Readers’ Lives.” Bolles invented much of what we know about career planning today.

What was job-hunting state-of-the-art before Parachute was written 28 years ago?
The same as it is now — that there’s a better way to job hunt, but it hasn’t gotten out yet. Remember, although I have six million readers, that’s only a drop in the bucket compared to the 131 million people in the workforce.

What Color Is Your Parachute? has become a household term. How did you come up with it?
I wrote the book back in a time when people who were tired of their jobs said, “I’ve decided to bail out.” I always thought of an airplane when I heard that phrase, so I playfully would respond, “What color is your parachute?” When I subsequently wrote the book, I gave it that title because all my friends found it very amusing.

Some people think you got it from the phrase golden parachutes.
Actually, it was the other way around. That phrase came from the title of my book, or so a reporter for Life magazine once told me. I don’t care for the phrase, myself. My book is about how to take control of your own life, whereas the term golden parachutes implies someone else is going to take care of you.

Many aren’t aware you’re an ordained Episcopalian minister. Can you tell us something else people may not know about you?
Sure. As for my background, my studies were not only in theology, but also in psychology, chemical engineering and physics. As for what people don’t know about me and the book, the thing that surprises people the most is that I paste up the book, page by page, each year, with my own hands, scissors and paste, so it looks the way I want it to look. Then the publisher pours it into QuarkExpress.

Why do you think your book continues to sell over 200,000 copies each year — and has for the last 25 years?
I have no idea. Of course, if I didn’t update, revise and rewrite it each year, I’m sure it would have died a rattling death long ago. Most of my mail says people like the book because it’s conversational in tone, amusing, with pictures as well as text. Plus, it works.

Can you tell us an example of how you’ve revised Parachute?
John Crystal invented a process (he was my mentor for many years and has long since gone to his reward). I named the process informational interviewing. It’s an alternative to just walking in cold or choosing a career that you don’t really know much about and then finding out later it’s a big mistake. And so, one way we told them to research the industry and to research the kind of work they were thinking of doing was to go out and do informational interviewing.

Because there are always job hunters who like to cut corners, unfortunately, there were immediately those who saw this a really clever, sneaky way to get in to see somebody within the organization. It got so the idea of informational interviewing started having a very bad name.

I looked at it one day, and I realized there was one key omission in my description on what informational interviewing was. It’s not supposed to be with the boss or the person who has the ability to hire you, but rather, one step lower than that. It’s supposed to be with the person who is actually doing the work you’re thinking about doing.

You ultimately save your potential employer a lot of grief by doing informational interviewing because you don’t waste the time getting hired there, only to discover one month later that it isn’t the job you thought it was. So informational interviewing is to the advantage of the employer as much as it is to the advantage of the job hunter. But I found I had to emphasize that. I had to say that if you misuse it as a sneaky way to get in to see the person who has the power to hire you, that’s not informational interviewing.

I have gotten more and more emphatic about that as the years progress — I don’t like seeing job-hunters playing tricks on employers. After all, I’m an employer myself, as well as an ongoing advocate for the rights of job hunters.

Do you think there are people in HR who disagree with your advice to job hunters?
Oh, sure. The antecedents of HR lay in the invention of personnel departments during the Great Depression to ward off armies of job hunters. Therefore, I warn people who are beyond job screening to stay away from HR departments. I recall an HR organization that [invited me to speak as] one of their keynoters, and someone publicly asked why I warned people to stay away from HR departments during their job hunt. I replied, “Don’t answer this out loud, just think about it — if you were out of work, would you apply to the HR department?” I saw by their faces they would not, whereupon I continued, “If you know enough to stay away from that department during your job hunt, why should that same information not be given to the average job hunter?”

Do you think all HR people disagree with your advice in Parachute?
Oh, by no means. I know a lot of HR people, and many of them tell me how much they like what I tell job hunters. In fact, one HR person once phoned me and said, “Please warn people to stay away from this place.”

If an HR director or staff person has to perform the screening-out function because that’s why they were hired, how can they elevate the function of the HR department where they work, vis-a-vis job hunters?
Well, I think it starts with what’s going on in your head. I think what an HR person ought to ‘get off on’ is not their power — to deny access — but rather, compassion. If you, as an HR person, realize you may be job hunting next week, that definitely makes you more compassionate toward this person in front of you.

Taking a few minutes to help them figure out in what areas they’re excellent often will be the difference. “Are you happiest working with people, data or things?” is one way to start that conversation. It’s amazing how much you can help people in a brief amount of time, if your goal is compassion, not power.

What if the boss comes down hard on the HR department for “wasting time” this way?
I’d probably make a little speech, were I in their shoes, something like the following: “I appreciate your concern, of course. I feel that the HR department isn’t only here to work internally, but also here to deal with how the organization is perceived out there in the world. If I spend a little time with those whom I have to turn away, they’re going to go out singing the praises of this organization and telling everyone how great we are. That kind of goodwill all the marketing and public relations dollars in the world can’t buy.”

Is ‘screening out’ the only reason you advise job hunters to avoid the HR department (where there is one), or are there other issues?
No, I don’t think job hunters have any other issues with the HR department — I certainly don’t. Many, many HR people are my friends; many know and use my book. We treat each other as allies, not adversaries.

I re-read Parachute this year, and what leaped out at me was how much spirituality there is in the book. Would you comment?
Thanks, I much appreciate such observations. That’s due to my background, of course. But it’s also due to something [forecaster] George Gallup once told me over lunch: Since 1960, their poll had revealed the same thing every year: about 92 percent of the American people believe in some concept of God. I’m unafraid to talk about this, and I get such grateful letters from my readers who appreciate my integrating spirituality into the job hunt — an overwhelming part of my mail, in fact. The chapter in my book called “How to Find Your Mission in Life” is hands-down the most popular part of the book, judging from my mail.

Your book is also playful — could you talk about that aspect of its spirit?
I’ve always thought playfulness was an essential ingredient to daily happiness; I learned this from my father, who was an editor for the Associated Press. I think all playfulness begins with not taking ourselves too seriously at all. For example, I get up in the morning, look like a normal 6-foot 5-inch man, who faces the day confident of his ability to cope. But I wear suspenders, and often as I put on my pants I catch my heel in those suspenders, and pitch myself into the wall. I stand there laughing and laughing. The gulf between our pretensions and our actual performance is a source of great amusement to me. I think all playfulness begins with that gulf.

Can we do word associations?
Sure.

Outplacement.
A dying art, I think. Companies now seem to be concentrating on the services they give to those who remain, not just to those who are downsized.

Corporate training programs.
A mixed bag. Some HR people are excellent at identifying their organi-zation’s training needs. Others just run after the latest fad or the latest buzzword.

Coaching.
A well-intentioned attempt to give brief help to people, after brief training. Sometimes, its emphasis is unfortunately on bailing people out of a dilemma, instead of teaching them how to solve it for themselves. Only the latter is worthy of the name of coaching.

Downsizing.
Always saluted by the stock market, always decried by the people who lose their jobs. As a trend in society, it has produced great profits but at the cost of tremendous human suffering. Downsizing often shatters people’s trust — they never trust again.

Mergers.
Well, there’s a hostile merge and then there’s a marriage desired by both partners. Big difference. Shotgun marriages are to be avoided both in the home and in the business world.

Consultants.
The best are those who ask all the resident managers what decisions they would reverse if they were in charge of that place, sifting those [decisions], and then recommending the best. In other words, in most cases, the best consultants are those already inside the organization. The best outside consultant is one who knows that and uses it — rather than coming in with a ready-made solution, one size fits all.

On a personal note, I’ve found it’s impossible to mention your name around without someone saying, “He turned my life around,” or “That book changed my life.” Tell me about life as a cult hero.
Well, let me first of all comment on that last phrase. A young priest was once asking his mentor what to do with all the praise he received after every Sunday’s sermon. The wise, old priest replied, “Listen, but don’t inhale.” If anyone starts to think of him or herself as a cult hero, the person has got more problems than he or she knows. A certain humility — a certain sense that God is working through one, and therefore, the credit belongs to Him and not to us — is essential to growing old gracefully. And I’d like to grow old gracefully. I’m 71.

But your question reminds me of a woman from Canada who once wrote me to say that my book had changed her life. I wrote back, “Would you mind telling me precisely what it was in my book that changed your life?” She responded, “Oh, that sentence about ‘you can do anything you set your mind to doing.’”

I was puzzled about that for a long time. Such a simple sentence, so obvious — how did that change her life? As I thought about it, I saw a picture in my mind of people pushing a snowball up a hill during the winter. The snowball, of course, was getting larger and larger, while they were puffing harder.

Eventually, they got the snowball to the crest — a brief crest where the hill almost immediately sloped down the other way. They paused to rest, and accidentally brushed against the huge snowball, whereupon it started careening down the other side of the hill all by itself.

We all huff and puff while dealing with life’s difficulties and adversities, but eventually, we get to the top of some hill in our life, where we have a chance to catch our breath. At that moment in the life of a job hunter, the briefest sentence, the briefest encouragement, can start the snowball of our life down the other side, with increasing ease and speed. I think my book is often picked up by people just as they are at the crest of that hill, at which point almost anything they read can have a great effect upon them.

I don’t mean to dismiss the content of the book, or how hard I strive to make it useful. But overall, it’s a very humbling thing to have your book used in this fashion in people’s lives — it’s a kind of spiritual manual masquerading as a job-hunting book. I think anyone who helps change the life of another person has been midwife to an extraordinary event. And helping people is why we’re all in the HR business, isn’t it?

Workforce, September 1998, Vol. 77, No. 9, pp. 50-54.