Category: Musings

New beginnings

Today, thousands of children across the UK had their first day at secondary school. My youngest two were among them. Seeing them head off in their shiny new uniforms earlier this morning made for a very proud moment.

But today was a very big day for me professionally, too.

Our children were born during what I’d call the peak of my career. When Maddie and Ollie came along we already had Henry, and I was travelling the world giving keynotes, visiting project sites, picking up lucrative consultancy work, writing guest articles for major news outlets and magazines, publishing books, working with the likes of Archbishop Tutu and Peter Gabriel, and winning awards and Fellowships for my social innovation efforts. It was an incredible time, and I still pinch myself when I think about it.

But it was one that didn’t sit comfortably with parenthood.

So I stepped back and, after a brief final flurry of overseas travel, gave it all up to prioritise my young family. That meant taking less risk and focusing on work which meant I could be at home as much as possible to do the school runs, cook dinner and tuck the kids into bed at night. You know, the kind of stuff you only get one chance of doing.

To say I’ve missed the buzz and excitement of what came before would be an understatement, and even now I look back fondly on what was a golden age for me and my work. But it was all worth it, and today is testament to that.

My target, all those years ago, was to see all the children safely into secondary school, and only after that to focus back on myself. Today is the first day of that new beginning. I’m excited for what’s ahead, and feel a sense of rebirth as I turn my attention back to things I want to do with my remaining time on this little blue planet of ours.

Time to dream. And breathe.

One of the obvious side effects of being out of work for three months is that you’re forced to take a break from the 9-to-5 routine that most of us end up enslaved to.

But in my case this enforced ‘break’ has turned out to be the best thing I could have done.

Taking any length of time off work to simply think and reflect might seem like a luxury few of us can afford. But it’s one of the best investments I’ve made in a long time, both professionally and personally. I’ve found a clarity I wouldn’t have found any other way.

Carving out time to pause and reflect has allowed me to step back and gain perspective. Most of us are constantly in the thick of things, buried in our work and our inboxes, and it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. A break from the daily grind provides the mental space needed to reassess direction, goals, strategies and priorities. It’s like hitting the refresh button, allowing new ideas to emerge and unexpected solutions and ideas to surface.

It also gives us time to dream. And breathe.

Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates all made a point of taking time off from their busy schedules to think, reflect and ponder. Gates famously has his ‘Think Weeks’ where he hides away with a stack of books and a notepad. These periods of isolation have been credited with some of his most groundbreaking insights.

Stepping away from work can also significantly boost your creativity. Our brains need down time to make connections between disparate ideas, and this is often where creative breakthroughs happen. Ever noticed how your best ideas come to you in the shower or during a quiet walk? That’s your brain at work, free from the clutter of the daily grind.

Being out of work isn’t fun, and there have been many occasions when I’ve struggled for motivation, or I’ve let all the worry get the better of me, or I’ve felt incredibly guilty for not being constantly productive. I’m one of those people who needs to keep busy – at least, I used to.

I’ve learnt a lot about myself over the past three months, things I’d never have learnt had I not had the space and the time. On Monday I start a new job as Venture Coach for beVisioneers: The Mercedes-Benz Fellowship, and I couldn’t be more excited.

It was the time away that gave me the clarity (and opportunity) to focus my time on this exciting line of work. Watch this space for more.

So thank you, universe, for gifting me the chance to think.

I hope I don’t let you down.

Time to be true to ourselves

Less than a week into my latest job search I repeated one fatal mistake, a mistake I’ve made over and over again over the years. You probably have, too.

Except this time I took a step back, recognised it, and put it right.

What am I talking about? That relentless career/salary progression thing, that’s what. The idea that your career, while it may not follow a beautiful straight line, is somehow meant to keep pointing up, keep getting better.

You know, that ‘Supervisor’ to ‘Assistant Manager’ to ‘Manager’ to ‘Director’ to ‘Senior Director’ to ‘C-suite’ progression thing. And the better and better salaries that go with it. There’s an insane expectation, and sometimes pressure, for us to try and steer our careers along this path. And it makes no sense, no sense at all.

The mistake I made after just a few days into my latest search was to focus my time on well-paid, senior roles. You know, ticking that top tier salary box on Guardian Jobs, then selecting the most senior job categories, and then seeing what comes out – and realising that all of the results are the kinds of jobs I’d never, ever want to do any more. I’m just being honest.

Years ago I’d have probably just gone with it, and most likely ended up working somewhere I’d find deeply frustrating, overly bureaucratic, and a creative thinking graveyard. But hey, the salary would have been good, so the price is worth paying, right?

Wrong.

Since early March I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. Dangerous, I know. Never before have I given myself this much time to seriously ponder what a late career/life reboot might look like for me. But I’ve been reading a lot, hoping to get a few ideas. ‘Four Thousand Weeks‘ (by Oliver Burkeman) and ‘From Strength to Strength‘ (by Arthur Brooks) have been two of the best books I could have ever read. Few recent books have altered my thinking more than those two have.

The end result of all of this is that I’ve stopped chasing senior roles, stopped chasing titles, and stopped chasing big salaries. In my case at least, it’s really not worth it. I want to jump out of bed in the morning with a spring in my step, to do work that makes me sing, and do the kind of work that my kids would be proud of. And if the money doesn’t quite stretch to all the things we used to be able to do, then so be it. We’re doing okay. I’ve always been nothing if not resourceful.

Despite the uncertainty, I’m probably more excited now than I have been in a long time. I’m taking control of the huge chunk of my life that I’d usually hand over to an employer. As Buddha tells us, we really ought to seek the ‘right livelihood‘, work which doesn’t do harm to ourselves or others, and is ethically positive,

Too many people are unhappy in their work, and in my book that counts as harm – to themselves. We keep hearing that we should ‘bring our authentic selves’ to work. But how many of us really do?

“Knowing others is intelligence. Knowing yourself is true wisdom” – Lao Tzu

Why we need more anthropologists

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Today I’m back at the University of Edinburgh talking to anthropology students about how I’ve used my degree in my global technology/development career. I can’t overstate how refreshing it is to speak to a room not obsessed with technology, or scaling projects, or measuring impact. For me, it’s always started with the people and, for everyone in the room, it will be the same. I’ve long advised people interested in a career in global development to study anthropology (better still, anthropology with development studies, as I did at Sussex University).

It may sound crazy, but there aren’t enough people focused on understanding people in the technology-for-development world (one week field trips carrying out surveys don’t count). You see plenty of ‘Technology Advisor’ roles, but where are the ‘People Advisors’? There’s plenty of everything else, just not enough of that. I’m currently looking at work opportunities in the technology-for-development sector, and don’t think I’ve seen a single job description define a major requirement for time spent in the field, understanding the context of technology use in global development. And, of course, no mention of the word ‘anthropology’ anywhere. Everything else seems to matter more than that, and it’s something we have to put right. Anthropology has a huge amount to offer the sector – it just doesn’t seem to know it yet.

A question that I often get asked when people get over the shock that I have an anthropology degree, not something computer science-related, is “What on earth would anthropologists be doing playing with mobile phones?”. The answer may be a little more obvious than you think, but let’s start at the beginning.

Anthropology is an age-old, at times complex discipline, and like many others it suffers from its fair share of in-fighting and disagreement. It’s also a discipline shrouded in a certain mystery. Few people seem to know what anthropology really is, or what anthropologists really do, and a general unwillingness to ask simply fuels the mystery further. Few people ever question, for example, what a discipline better (but often incorrectly) ‘known’ for poking around with dinosaur bones is doing playing with mobile phones and other digital devices.

What anthropology isn’t

The public face of anthropology likely sits somewhere close to an Indiana Jones-type character, a dashing figure in khaki dress poking around with ancient relics while they try to unpick ancient puzzles and mysteries, or a bearded old man working with a leather-bound notepad in a dusty, dimly lit inaccessible room at the back of a museum building. If people were to be believed, anthropologists would be studying everything from human remains to dinosaur bones, old pots and pans, ants and roads. Yes, some people even think anthropologists study roads.

Despite the mystery, in recent years anthropology has witnessed something of a mini renaissance. As our lives become exposed to more and more technology, and companies become more and more interested in how technology affects us and how we interface with it, anthropologists have found themselves in increasing demand. When Genevieve Bell turned her back on academia and started working with Intel in the late 1990’s, she was accused of “selling out”. Today, anthropologists jump at the chance to help influence future innovation and, for many, working in industry has become the thing to do.

What anthropology is

So, if anthropology isn’t the study of ants or roads, what is it? Generally described as the scientific study of the origin, the behaviour, and the physical, social, and cultural development of humans, anthropology is distinguished from other social sciences – such as sociology – by its emphasis on what’s called cultural relativity, the principle that an individuals’ beliefs and activities should be interpreted in terms of their own culture, not that of the anthropologist. Anthropology also offers an in-depth examination of context – the social and physical conditions under which different people live – and a focus on cross-cultural comparison. To you and me, that’s comparing one culture to another. In short, where a sociologist might put together a questionnaire to try and understand what people think of an object, an anthropologist would immerse themselves in the subject and try to understand it from ‘within’.

Anthropology has a number of sub-fields and, yes, one of those does involve poking round with old bones and relics. But for me, development anthropology has always been the most interesting sub-field because of the role it plays in the gobal development arena. As a discipline it was borne out of severe criticism of the general development effort, with anthropologists regularly pointing out the failure of many agencies to analyse the consequences of their projects on a wider, human scale. Sadly, not a huge amount has changed since the 1970’s, making development anthropology as necessary today as it has ever been. Many academics – and practitioners, come to that – argue that anthropology should be a key component of the development process. In reality, in some projects it is, and in others it isn’t.

The importance of KYC (Know Your Customer)

It’s widely recognised that projects can succeed or fail on the realisation of their relative impacts on target communities, and development anthropology is seen as an increasingly important element in determining these positive and negative impacts. In the consumer electronics sector – particularly within emerging market divisions – it is now not uncommon to find anthropologists working within the corridors of hi-tech companies. Intel, Nokia and Microsoft are three such examples. Just as large development projects can fail if agencies fail to understand their target communities, commercial products can fail if companies fail to understand the very same people. In this case, these people go by a different name – customers.

Selling phones as torches in Uganda. Photo: Ken Banks

The explosive growth of mobile ownership in the developing world is largely down to a vibrant recycling market and the initial arrival of cheap $20 feature phones (and now $75 smartphones), but is also down in part to the efforts of forward-thinking mobile manufacturers. Anthropologists working for companies such as Nokia spend increasing amounts of time trying to understand what people living at the bottom of the pyramid, or those with very limited disposable income, might want from a phone. Mobiles with flashlights are just one example of a product that can emerge from this brand of user-centric design. Others include mobiles with multiple phone books, which allow more than one person to share a single phone (a practice largely unheard of in many developed markets) and phones which hold multiple SIMs.

My anthropology journey

My first taste of anthropology came a little by accident, primarily down to Sussex University‘s policy of students having to select a second degree subject to go with their Development Studies option (this was my key interest back in 1996). Social anthropology was one choice, and one which looked slightly more interesting than geography, Spanish or French (not that there’s anything wrong with those subjects). During the course of my degree I formed many key ideas and opinions around central pieces of work on the appropriate technology movement and the practical role of anthropology, particularly in global conservation and development work.

Today, mobile devices are closing the digital divide in ways the PC never did. Industry bodies such as the GSM Association, who have previously run Bridging the Digital Divide initiatives, today remain extremely active in the mobile-for-development sector. International development agencies pump hundreds of millions dollars into economic, health and educational initiatives centred around mobiles and mobile technology. Mobile phones today are almost as exciting as big data, 3D printers and drones.

I’m immensely proud of my anthropology roots, and the insights it has given me in my work. Without it, I’d not have successfully conceived and developed FrontlineSMS. I’m also very proud with my ongoing association with Sussex University in my capacity as Ambassador for International Development.

And I’m always happy to do my part to promote the discipline in the technology-for-development world because I think it needs more – many more – anthropologists walking the corridors if it’s to take full advantage of the wonderful digital opportunity it has been given. I just hope it starts paying attention before it’s too late.