I didn’t study anthropology (UCL 1986 -1990) because I thought it would lead me into PR and then sentiment insight and analysis. But looking back, it taught me almost everything I now believe about listening.
Anthropology starts with curiosity about people: how they live, what they value, how they make decisions, what they say about themselves and, importantly, what they actually do.
It teaches you not to rush to the answer.
Instead, you watch. You listen. You ask why. You notice what doesn’t quite fit. And you try to understand behaviour in context rather than judging it from the outside.
That turns out to be remarkably useful in business.
People don’t exist in spreadsheets
Organisations understandably like certainty.
We want a score. A percentage. A trend. A dashboard that tells us whether things are getting better or worse.
But people are rarely that tidy.
Someone can be satisfied with a service and frustrated by the relationship. An employee can be proud of their organisation and exhausted by their role. A customer can love what you offer and still leave.
None of those things are contradictions once you understand the context.
Anthropology taught me to be comfortable with that complexity.
Instead of asking, “Which answer is right?”, I tend to ask, “What is happening here?”
That small shift can change the quality of the insight completely.
And it is one of the reasons I don’t see research as simply a process of collecting answers. I see it as an exercise in understanding people well enough to know what the answers mean and what they might be telling us that the question didn’t ask.
Context changes everything
One of the most useful things anthropology teaches us is that behaviour makes more sense when you understand the world around it.
Take a simple example. An employee doesn’t speak in a meeting.
You could interpret that as disengagement.
Or perhaps they are new. Perhaps the loudest voices always dominate. Perhaps they tried speaking up before and nothing happened. Perhaps they are very engaged but don’t feel it is safe to disagree.
The behaviour is the same.
The meaning is completely different.
This is why good research needs context. Without it, we can become very good at describing what people do without understanding why.
Listen for the story, not just the answer
Anthropological research is interested in stories and experiences, not simply opinions.
What happened?
What happened next?
Who was involved?
What did you do?
How did that make you feel?
What did you expect to happen?
These questions move a conversation away from abstract statements and towards real experience.
And real experience is often where the insight lives.
It also gives people something concrete to talk about. Rather than asking someone to explain an opinion they may never have consciously formed, you ask them to walk you through something that actually happened. The detail can be revealing: the workaround, the frustration, the moment expectations changed, or the decision they made afterwards.
Someone may tell you that communication is poor. That’s useful.
But ask them to describe the last time they felt poorly communicated with, and suddenly you have something much more tangible: a moment, a decision, a missed expectation, perhaps a behaviour that can actually be changed.
The value of observing the ordinary
Anthropology also taught me to pay attention to the ordinary.
Not just the dramatic complaint or the big moment in the survey data, but the small things people do without thinking.
What do they avoid?
What workarounds have they created?
Who do they go to when they need help?
What do they do when the official process doesn’t work?
Those behaviours can tell you a great deal about how an organisation, service or relationship really works.
People often don’t describe these things because they have become normal to them.
You have to notice them.
From observation to action
Of course, understanding people isn’t enough.
Insight only becomes valuable when it changes something.
That’s where I think anthropology and good commercial research meet.
The job isn’t to produce fascinating observations about human behaviour and put them in a report.
It’s to understand what is really happening well enough to identify what needs to change and then help an organisation act on it.
That might mean changing a process. Rethinking a service. Having a difficult conversation. Giving people more confidence to speak up. Or, sometimes, deciding not to change something at all because the evidence tells you it is working.
The point is that the decision is grounded in understanding, rather than assumption.
That is the bit I think is often missing from research: the journey from observation to understanding to action. If the research doesn’t help you make a better decision, it is interesting but it isn’t yet useful.
What anthropology still gives me
Years after completing my degree, I still find myself using the same habits of mind:
Be curious. Don’t assume you already know why.
Look for context. Behaviour rarely makes sense in isolation.
Listen for the story. Experiences reveal more than abstract opinions.
Notice the ordinary. Small behaviours can reveal big problems.
Stay comfortable with complexity. People can hold apparently contradictory views at the same time.
And perhaps most importantly:
Don’t confuse an answer with understanding.
That is probably the biggest thing my studies gave me.
It taught me that if you really want to understand people, you have to get curious about the world as they experience it not just the questions you want them to answer.
And that, for me, is still the starting point for good insight.
Because ultimately, good research isn’t about asking people more questions.
It is about getting closer to the truth of their experience and knowing what to do with what you find.