Inspiration & Downloads

'Looking death in the eye is the beginning of the solution'

‘Jitske Kramer, as a corporate anthropologist, fillets divided society. She calls the present time a transitional phase that calls for fundamental choices’

I was always someone of certainties, of firm convictions. Partly because I am just a Kamsteeg and partly because I grew up in a denomination that had ready-made answers to the most complicated theological questions. Those days of certainties are now several years behind me.

The jolly charlatan is a nice archetype. But not if it starts to define the discussion and we end up in a culture of half-truths, anthropologist Jitske Kramer believes.

In 'Tricky Times', Jitske Kramer compellingly unravels the human patterns of radical change. Her book provides interpretation and reads like an adventure story, full of opportunities, dangers and temptations in this troubled intermediate phase of transformations.

‘Thinking for yourself is important, but how do you separate sense from nonsense?’

We are in a transitional phase in many areas, a confusing in-between period where things are not how they were, but also not yet how they should or will be. Anthropologists call this interim period ‘liminality’, a crucial phase to achieve transformation, full of opportunities, dangers and temptations.

Climate. Energy. Poverty. Nitrogen. The housing market. Agriculture. The asylum issue. All concepts we can put the word crisis behind. And there are many more.

Years ago, I travelled through the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, the habitat of the !Kung, a nomadic people. The !Kung say you are not an adult until you can tell your story.

Als society is in a period of great transformation, anthropologist Jitske Kramer concludes. In her book Tricky times, she writes about what it takes to let go of the familiar.

Anything that advances economic growth is good. To that end, we stretch the limits further and further. Jitske Kramer calls that trickster tactics. 'We have come to confuse that with leadership.' ‘Tricksters play with boundaries and stretch them. They are mischievous, hugely creative and shake things up,’ the corporate anthropologist explains to MT/Sprout.

What can change management learn from anthropologists? In this extensive interview with corporate anthropologist Jitske Kramer, Guido van de Wiel discusses this with her. Jitske shows that change happens in threes, which rites of passage you can distinguish and why they actually exist