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Focusing on the client-consultant relationship, well honed, but perhaps overly so, this paper aims to shed light on the conditions that at once streamline and challenge our collaborations. To do so, we borrow a page from the visual arts; namely an experimental method of representation called negative space drawing. In both its aim (to create a picture from a new perspective) and challenge (to shake off the preconceived notions that limit us) drawing from negative space reflects a similar dynamic to our own. By way of a case study commissioned by one author and conducted by the other, we sketch a framework of negative space which examines our respective biases and agendas and our endeavors to resolve them.
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The purpose of this exercise is to develop facility at perceiving objects as physical shapes rather than as verbal descriptions. This exercise makes us “see” an object in an unusual way, and can help us draw what’s actually there, rather than what we think “ought” to be there.
Robert Gardiner, the University of British Columbia
INTRODUCTION: CHALLENGING OUR ROLE IN THE VALUE CHAIN
Practicing ethnographic research in industry finds us at a particular moment in time. We have seen qualitative research of our ‘persuasion’ establishing a foothold across corporations and across the world. Settling down in a number of comfortable, synergistic spots where our brand of people based insight can find a home. The number of landing marks has proliferated, finding ourselves not only operating within product development processes and marketing but as well moving closer and closer to business development and strategy. In the consulting world in particular, qualitative research has found footholds from which to lift itself up, closer and closer to the places where decisions are made client side. In essence, we have moved from being a vendor to an advisor.
However, with this popularization of our practice, working consultancy side I have noticed tensions which may potentially limit the wider application of ethnography in industry. The very same places where we have been able to seek refuge, which have come to appreciate and require our services, are now places where our role can become potentially limited by the very processes developed to make our integration client side more effective. With the best of intentions, our clients’ goal to enable smooth translation of people based insights into their own internal processes unfortunately bring with them the very same issue that we set out to tackle in the first place – lack of critical perspective. Victims of our own success, our establishment within corporate processes raises ever more challenges to our development, especially as we aim to have greater influence.
This paper aims to shed light on these tensions in ethnographic practice across the client-consultant divide. To do so, it will borrow a page from the visual arts – namely a method for drawing, an experiment in representation – negative space drawing – which in both its aim (to create a picture from a new perspective) and challenge (to shake off the preconceived notions that limit us) reflect a similar dynamic to our own in consulting clients. Representational drawing refers to negative space as that which is not the object of representation. By focusing on negative space, the draftsperson can disassociate from his bias of what he believes he is drawing: a cup, a bowl, an apple; and instead create a better likeness of the scene before him. In recognizing a negative space of understanding, I suggest we as practitioners can begin to move clients away from that which they believe to be the object of their research efforts: a finding, an insight, a need, which fit neatly into their agendas in order to craft a richer (but not necessarily complicated) picture from which to act upon.
LOOKING BEYOND DESIRE LINES
When we engage with clients, we enter into a relationship bound by the expectations of what qualitative research’s role is in business contexts today. Similar to the draftsperson attempting to draw a still life, clients bring with them pre-formed ideas grounded in professional experience. For many, a major foothold, or desire line, lies in marketing divisions. This is perhaps the longest standing tradition, or the one with which people most readily associate the ‘tool’ of qualitative research. By virtue of this, we find ourselves both in a comfortable place, as well as a staid place – or at least a place in which corporate processes, and presuppositions about how ethnographic methods should be used and towards what ends are well worn, and as such, difficult to challenge.
Sunderland and Denny, examine a similar tension, acknowledging the tenuous co-existence of ‘entrenched practices’ of anthropologists and market researchers (Sunderland and Denny, 2007). Nafus and Anderson in their paper the The Real Problem: Rhetorics of Knowing in Corporate Ethnographic Research similarly problemitize the relationship between ‘us’ and ‘them’ in order to exorcise very literally ‘the ghosts in the machine.’ By extension, this paper aims to build upon their framework of ‘the real’ by seeing the context anew – through a negative space construct. As client and consultant, our ‘he said, she said’ approach brings forth a different perspective on the conditions that frame our practice; not only exposing our reflective stance on ethnography in industry, but as well how our ‘entanglements’ (Sunderland and Denny, 2007) provide new instances of knowing that challenge our ability to see and theorize clearly.
In the shift towards broadening their perspective on qualitative data, marketing divisions and the product groups they serve have had the task of fitting such potentially vivid and often messy input into the way they work and are evaluated. Dealing with internal stakeholders is of course a major consideration for our counterparts in corporations and is one that we empathize and work to address in our engagements.
But it is this vividness and messiness that I’d like to take a moment to consider. One of the main proponents of engaging in the ethnographic is that somehow it is seen as more real. (Nafus and Anderson 2005) By taking them to the jungle (not the zoo), we promise a dose of reality and rawness that with it brought the promise of radical insight and change. (this is particularly the case within innovation where the emphasis on significant growth makes ethnography and other less conventional methods not just acceptable but desirable). In leading these kind of ethnographic forays, however, it is easy to err on the side of the selling point at times, and lose our heads (and at times theory) in the moments of serving our clients – and particularly, their expectations. These are the conditions under which Nafus and Anderson so clearly point out in their critique of the real.
This is not to delegitimize the rationale for bringing the client to the field in the first place. Doing this ensures a clearer path for insights to make their way into the organization and hopefully back out again into the real world. This ‘buy in’ as it were, has become a critical aspect of delivering on our mandate while also creating a solid and sustainable practice within industry. When we bring non-researchers into the field, and by this I do not mean to open up the whole can of worms debate from 2006 on ‘real ethnographers’, but rather to state we cannot forget that these are professionals for whom there exist specific tools of the trade and world views, shaped by the organizations and divisions that they work within. Tools and views that if we are not careful, can occlude our own vision in advising our clients, rather than just serving them.
Because we can encounter clients/stakeholders with varying degrees of knowledge about the breadth of insight ethnographic applications can deliver, we on occasion find ourselves devising (and sometimes struggling in the process) ways which challenge our client’s perspective through navigable channels. At once playing to their expectations of delivery formats (hard proof – video clips, quotes, photos) but then having to contend with what our proof may inadvertently set into motion.
In an effort to examine closely these tensions – between how industry aims to easily fit qualitative research into their processes (e.g. segments, testimonials, use cases) and what we fear may get lost in the process (e.g. insights and strategies) – we propose a negative space framework of knowledge. Moving along the trajectory of a particular case – a project commissioned by one author of this paper (client), and conducted by the other author (consultant) – we will discuss three types of negative space: 1) that which does not transpire, 2) that which cannot be captured and 3) that which is in between. Each of these negative spaces examines the relationship between client and consultant – their biases, contexts and collective aim to wrest only the very best out of the process.
DRAWING THE NEGATIVE SPACE OF KNOWLEDGE
In the fall of 2007, Orange/FT commissioned a body of research on European homes. This study sought to uncover a deep understanding of practices in the home that could be used to inform new product development
Negative Space: That Which Does Not Transpire
As with most projects, the study was initiated through an RFP. Herein our first encounter of negative space arises. No doubt, the focus provided by a lens is vital, but we don’t want to occlude our vision from interesting things that occur on the sidelines. The RFP introduces a scope to restrict subsequent shifts once work has started. Unfortunately, as we shall see, without sufficient care it can also have the unintended consequence of over constraining the work by preventing the discovery of new insights. It determines what is considered interesting and may act to occlude potentially important events.
For ReD the arrival of the RFP brings numerous challenges. Firstly, understanding what the client’s specific research goals are and how they fit into the wider picture of the client’s organization. We see this as re-scoping based on our view of what the client can’t see themselves – the outside perspective. From the client side, however, they are very wary of this, perceiving consultancy’s re-scoping of a project as potentially opportunistic, suiting themselves, but not the customer. For instance, moving scope onto an area they already know more about, but is of less interest to the client. Or changing the goal-posts so they have to do less work now, or so that they get the chance of doing more (lucrative) work later. Herein lies one of the more fundamental tensions between client and consultant.
Second, there is the task to not only address these objectives, but create a research approach that provides a fresh approach, a distinguishing factor that makes it stand out from competing proposals. This involves giving a flavour for what the research will reveal. Again, the challenge here is to draw attention without over-promising or building too detailed a picture because this may serve to consolidate early expectations of what areas are most important. ReD in this case, crafted a vision for the client which outlined household activities which it felt would cast new light on Orange’s understanding of household needs. The proposal was organized around the family meal, a chore chart, and a night in; attempts to probe on how households may or may not engage in such activities and in turn point to potentially new ways to understand the home.
Yet it was this very proposal, or staging of ethnographic activities, which created expectations and stress on the part of the research team to ensure that these activities transpire. These issues of occlusion gain greater prominence as the process develops, peaking at various touchpoints of understanding between client and consultant – In the move from preliminary staging of research into the fieldwork itself. Fieldwork is one of the first touchpoints, presenting the first testing as it were of our commitment to the RFP, and the items outlined. To refer to it as a checklist may seem to overstate the role of the RFP, but we cannot underestimate its contractual nature. Segmentation in particular is one component of commercial ethnography where adherence to this checklist is readily found as segments institutionalized role within industry make this the case.
In the Orange case, the internal client was most interested in specific segments that constituted different types of families – those with young children and those with teens. Looking across life stages provided a structure for how family needs change over the course of their children’s development. Beyond this frame, additional criteria were added to give further breadth and depth to the study. An urban, suburban dimension was added, and as well, an interview condition which required entire households to be present – if not for the duration of the interview – at least for some significant period of time.
With interviews lasting upwards of 5 hours at a time, combined with the aforementioned criteria, recruiting study participants proved challenging, which resulted in anxieties on both sides of the client consultant divide. As clients require research to be used immediately and effectively towards practical ends, their goal is to be able to add qualitative findings to the pre-existing corpus of data. Hence, when bumps arise, they present risks to this engine and can place the consultant in an uncomfortable position of having failed. Here is where we want to step back and ask ourselves whether or not failing to recruit families that met segment criteria and interview demands over the course of a one-week window should be necessarily viewed as such. In fact, we propose the opposite. From both perspectives, client and consultant, these real world bumps expose the realities of how families live today. In such metropolises as London and Paris, where the study took place, family structure and practices hardly match the idealized versions cast in the segments, and as well in the scenarios the consultancy used to illustrate how interviews would transpire.
While both parties were able to acknowledge this matter as a finding, there was still the very real concern that client-side stakeholders would perceive this as a failure to deliver. Experienced ethnographers understand that fieldwork does not mark the beginning or the end of data collection. Data arises from the friction between the research framework and the world, which it aims to study and understand, whether or not it occurs in the time-boxed activity of field research or in the stages before and after actual household visits. But regardless of the client’s own ability to recognize segments as approximations, caricatures, even, it is their broader audience within the organization, especially those far from the actual research engagement, who forget that they are idealized descriptions rather than real people. Hence when things don’t go according to plan, client and consultant alike must ask themselves why. By using a negative space framework, understanding why it is things did not transpire. And more importantly, why is it that for some it is so critical that it had. A lesson for all involved to negotiate their role in seeding knowledge across the value chain.