Most businesses do not have a technology problem first. They have a human problem first.

When we run agencies, build on WordPress, manage digital marketing, support e-commerce, and ship eLearning projects, it is easy to chase the newest AI feature before we define the job it needs to do. In the complex business world, many leaders fail to address the core company culture, opting for shiny tools instead of meaningful strategy. In this YouTube conversation on Manana No Mas!, Kurt von Ahnen sat down with Andi Simon to discuss how corporate anthropology helps leaders identify the root causes of their challenges, rather than just copying industry trends or ignoring hard questions.

The result was a practical discussion about change, retirement, hiring, purpose, and the kind of listening that keeps a business useful.

Key Takeaways

• Prioritize Human Problems Over Tools: Before implementing new technology like AI, businesses must define the specific human-centric challenges they are trying to solve to avoid wasting resources on unnecessary features.
• Use Ethnography for Deeper Insights: By applying participant observation and qualitative research, organizations can uncover the root causes of misalignment between their offerings and actual user behaviors.
• Identity Drives Workplace Success: Understanding that work provides structure, community, and purpose is critical, especially when managing organizational change or navigating life transitions like retirement.
• Focus on Purpose Over Scarcity: Adopting a mindset of growth and service—rather than competition—allows leaders to build stronger, more diverse teams and adapt to evolving market demands.

Corporate anthropology starts with the problem, not the tool

Andi Simon describes her work in simple terms: she helps companies see, feel, and think in new ways. That sounds abstract until we connect it to daily agency life. We hear it every time a client asks for AI in a CRM, a page builder, or a content workflow without explaining what success would look like. Through the lens of applied anthropology, Andi helps leaders look past the technology to uncover the core issues driving their business.

Kurt’s example was perfect. A client wanted to activate an AI feature inside a page builder, yet all she wanted was another page on her site. That page already could have been duplicated, edited, and published the same day. The tool became the story, while the need stayed basic. This is a common failure in UX research where the team focuses on implementation rather than the actual user experience.

That is where corporate anthropology matters. Instead of asking, “Which tool do we add?” we use a process similar to design thinking to ask, “What is the unfulfilled challenge?” Andi made the point clearly: if we cannot define the problem, AI becomes little more than a fancy encyclopedia.

She also spoke candidly about using ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, and Gemini differently. Each can help, but none replaces judgment. That matters because companies are laying people off, changing workflows, and chasing automation before they understand how human behavior dictates which work should remain human-led.

Kurt’s plugin story drove the cost side home. A peer proudly spent about 40 hours building a custom plugin. At a $200 hourly rate, that experiment cost about $8,000 before maintenance. Meanwhile, a proven plugin could have cost a few hundred dollars a year. Curiosity has value, but businesses still need mirrors to ensure their investments solve real problems rather than just chasing the latest trends.

Listening shows where real change belongs

The strongest example in the conversation came from an association that was losing members. Its team kept offering old delivery methods, like newsletters, emails, and in-person training, while members wanted faster answers tied to live regulatory needs. The issue was not a lack of information; it was a mismatch between how the organization taught and how people needed to learn.

By applying ethnographic methods and participant observation, the team moved beyond assumptions to identify the root cause. This deeper look provided the consumer insights necessary to build a subscription-based AI agent using proprietary data. Because the solution was designed to align with actual consumer behavior, members could get timely answers about food safety and compliance without waiting for the next newsletter. Membership improved because the service finally matched the needs of the users.

That same pattern showed up in Kurt’s corporate training work. He moved technician education online for theory, then reserved in-person sessions for hands-on certification. This shift in innovation resulted in a measurable gain, with twice as many technicians trained for roughly half the cost.

That approach lines up with what we already know from modern eLearning. On WordPress, we can break content into shorter lessons, support quizzes and certificates, organize private training spaces or cohorts, and keep workshop time for tasks that still require physical demonstration. In other words, digital learning works best when we stop forcing long classroom habits into every job.

The warning came in Kurt’s next story. Another company hired him to modernize training and praised his ideas, but then froze when it was time to act. The office looked outdated, the company culture felt stagnant, and leadership admitted they were not ready for that level of change management. A business can ask for innovation long before its people are ready to live with it.

Retirement gets hard when work disappears

Andi’s newer focus, drawn from her book Rethink Retirement, widened the conversation by applying the principles of cultural anthropology to life transitions. She and her husband started studying retirement after he sold his business and joined hers. What they found was a subject deeply rooted in social science, revealing that the challenges of this stage are less about money and more about identity.

Again and again, people told her the same four things:

• We lose the title that told the world who we were.
• We lose the calendar that gave our days structure.
• We lose the purpose that work used to provide.
• We lose the built-in community that came from colleagues, clients, and routines.

That helps explain why retirement can feel like landing in a foreign country. When using anthropological theories to examine this shift, it becomes clear that many people save for decades, arrive at the finish line, and then refuse to spend the money they worked so hard to protect. Financial planners can build the math, but they cannot supply meaning.

This part of the discussion also connected back to AI in a surprising way. Kurt mentioned the public debate sparked by WordPress founder Katie Keith, who noticed that older adults often seem more willing to try AI while younger people can sound angrier about it. His own experience backed that up. Two older clients, George and Dan, are building a large educational project with hundreds of videos, multiple course tracks, and certification pathways. They are not slowing down. They are building a legacy.

That matters because purpose changes energy. Older adults are not always looking for an ending. Many are looking for a new role, a new community, or a new way to turn experience into something useful.

Purpose changes how we build teams and careers

Kurt’s side of the conversation kept returning to that same idea. Since leaving corporate life, he has built agency work around service, speaking, training, church work, and youth mountain biking. That flexibility lets him earn revenue and stay close to the work that gives his days meaning.

It also shapes how he thinks about competition. His apprenticeship program teaches younger people how to build agencies, even though some peers say he is training future rivals. His answer is better. There is more work than any one shop can handle, and the market expands when more people can serve it well. By shifting his approach to workplace dynamics, he focuses on growth rather than scarcity. If the old pie feels crowded, we can bake another pie.

The hiring discussion followed the same logic. In automotive and service roles, Kurt repeatedly saw women outperform expectations because they showed up, did the job, and stayed dependable. Later, when he needed help building eLearning at Suzuki, he fought to hire a skilled digital creator instead of the mechanic others expected him to choose. He picked for the future of the work, not the past of the department, which required challenging traditional organizational structures to succeed.

That same openness shows up in his global team. He works with people in Pakistan, Italy, Spain, and Africa, and he shared one small but telling example. A writer in Pakistan rewrote his homepage copy. The message got sharper, site behavior improved, and prospects started arriving better informed. This success highlights how evolving marketing strategies can provide a distinct competitive advantage for a modern business.

“The words we use create the worlds we live in.”

That line from Andi landed because it applies to leadership, hiring, sales pages, and culture all at once.

Where Andi Simon focuses her work

By the end of the episode, Andi described her work in three clear buckets.

• She helps organizations that feel stuck or stalled step back and perform qualitative research to read the signals they are missing from customers, staff, and the market. By applying expert market research, she helps these teams uncover hidden opportunities for growth.
• She runs long-term leadership academies for emerging leaders, applying the principles of organizational anthropology to ensure that these programs foster lasting change rather than temporary shifts.
• She now spends significant time helping people design the next chapter of life after full-time work, through retirement-focused coaching, master classes, and retreats.

We can find more about her work at Simon Associates or follow Andi Simon on LinkedIn.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is corporate anthropology and how does it help a business?

Corporate anthropology is the application of social science principles to the business environment. It helps organizations step back from daily operations to observe, feel, and think about their challenges differently, ensuring that strategies are built on human behavior rather than just industry trends.

Why is it often a mistake to adopt new AI tools immediately?

Many companies attempt to use AI as a solution before clearly defining the problem they need to solve. Without understanding the underlying human or operational need, these tools often become expensive “shiny objects” that fail to provide real value or ROI.

How does understanding culture improve team management?

By analyzing the unspoken social dynamics and communication patterns within a company, leaders can better navigate change management. This perspective helps identify when an organization is not culturally ready for an innovation, preventing stalled projects and leadership frustration.

Can corporate anthropology be applied to life after work?

Yes, the same principles used to evaluate organizational culture can be applied to individual life transitions. Examining retirement through an anthropological lens reveals that the primary challenges are not financial, but rather the loss of identity, structure, and community, requiring a shift in how one defines their purpose.

What we keep from this conversation

The best point in this episode had nothing to do with software. Companies need corporate anthropologists because change is personal before it is operational.

When we ask better questions about behavior, identity, language, and purpose, our business strategy improves significantly. By applying the principles of social science to the workplace, we gain a deeper understanding of how teams function. This shift in perspective is vital for modern product design and customer engagement, as these areas often look like technical tasks on the surface but become deeply human the moment people have to interact with them. Ultimately, prioritizing the human element is the key to meaningful innovation.

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