In B2B settings, before we deliver a software or process solution, it is worthwhile and sometimes, imperative, to understand the organizational dynamics of the firm. The tacit or latent knowledge contained in the minds, experience and sensibilities of the workers is a pool of vital knowledge that “observer-consultants” should tap into routinely.

Ethnography is the rigorous study of the routine daily lives of people in a culture, or business in our case, with the intent of understanding those people from their point of view as well as our own. Specifically, its intent in business applications is to understand people’s desired outcomes, and find explanations for why people do what they do. Ultimately, it is aimed at uncovering unmet, or even previously unstated needs that indicate a “market gap” and point towards a set of solutions to fill the gap. Of course, finding new ways to fill these gaps in our lives is at the heart of innovation.

Such research simply seeks to find the “what” people are doing, and then proceeds to understanding “why” they do those things. The process moves from uncovering actions, to uncovering feelings and then on to uncovering ways to understand, interpret the findings. Rhea, Darrel, 2005 refer to this as “making meaning”.

The outcome of this observation of the subject(s) is a rich set of data that could be mined to develop explanatory models of the culture in a firm. Of course, this approach opens up the possibility of extending the models in an effort to create a foundation for changing the culture, by creating new products, programs, services and also gives us great insight into creating “games” that people could play in an effort to bridge the gaps we find and improve worker productivity.