About Barbara Perry Associates: Our History

Founding

Barbara Perry Associates was founded in 1980 by Dr. Barbara Perry, a cultural anthropologist who pioneered in the application of anthropological methods and perspective to business challenges.

Cultural Anthropology: Real People, Real Stories, Their Turf. The holistic understanding of experience - what it means, in-context, to those whose behavior, needs and values we seek to decipher.

The First Decade: "In-Here"

Initially, our work focused internally on issues related to managing and implementing change of all kinds (new processes, structures, values, norms, technology). Working with all levels and functions, our work has always been characterized by a high level of diverse participation and input. The emphasis has been on building systemic commitment to a course of action. To this end we utilize a wide variety of approaches including: state-of-the-art strategic planning "search conferences" that bring large groups of diverse stakeholders together to envision their future and develop plans to get there; action learning groups of change leaders focused on real-time, learn-as-you-go implementation strategy; cross-cultural processes for global implementation; participative work design; and, building high performance cross-functional teams.

The First Decade: In-Here
Helping organizations change their work cultures to better achieve their goals.
Focus: Implementation and learning while doing.

The Second Decade: "Out-There"

Coming into the 90's, many organizations began to lift their heads out of the turbulent and humanly costly mire of endless reorganizations, downsizing and reengineering. They looked around and realized that in their intense inward focus they had lost sight of their customer, lost their "feel" for the market, perhaps, lost their ability to innovate. In this context, BPA was pulled by our customers to pioneer the use of team-based, anthropological methods to get closer to the customer. What has characterized our approach is the non-negotiable conviction that those who will use the data must be involved in collecting it. It is the experience, both with the customer and with their teammates out of which the breakthrough insights come. Our work is to develop the internal, cross-functional capability to go out into the world, see with new eyes, then use that experience as the catalyst for team dialogue out of which new concepts are born.

The Second Decade: Out-There
Facilitating team-based anthropological research that illuminates new opportunity spaces and builds commitment to a plan of action.

The Next Decade: Out-There and In-Here

There is no faster, more potent team-building or culture changing mechanism than the process of holistically immersing a diverse team in their customer's world. The experience grounds them in a shared reality - beyond function or personality - that they and their customers have all contributed to. This shared frame of reference is the catalyst for timely, aligned, and effective action.

We believe the next decade will be about The Big Picture - integrating Out-There and In-Here, customer and employee perspective. As companies speed up, the increased flow of data from out there will require unprecedented organizational capability to change as rapidly as the marketplace.

To this end, our focus will be to push the frontier where company culture meets customer. We will explicitly utilize the anthropological approach not only to develop meaningful relationships with customers, but, more importantly, to develop the organization's capacity to proactively recognize and act upon opportunities.

What we know about team-based, anthropological research is that it changes and develops individuals, teams, and the organization. Its products are implementable ideas across the spectrum from the fuzzy front end of new product development to marketing and brand strategy. Its by-products are energized, hopeful, aligned and committed teams of internal change agents.

The Next Decade: Integrating Out-There and In-Here to help build innovative, team-based, passionate, agile, customer-focused organizations.

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