Getting important people on the phone

Much of my research in PNG this time around includes trying to schedule meetings with highly-placed business men, in some cases some of the most prominent ‘captains of industry’ in the country. Getting ‘access’ — i.e. getting them to talk to me — has not been impossible but it has taken a fair amount of time. Much of my mornings are spent phoning offices and assign if there has been any move in scheduling an appointment with Mssrs. X, Y, and Z.

Sometimes people have genuine reasons not to see me — some executives travel regularly for their work and are rarely in town. Some are in the middle of particularly busy periods during my time here. Contacting these very busy people is complicated by the fact that none of them, as far as I can tell, keep an appointment book, agenda, or schedule: it is very rare for me to be able to say “well if this week is bad, how about four weeks from now on Tuesday at 2”. For whatever reason, they simply do not plan like that, as far as I can tell.

At other times, however, I have encountered something that feels like the run around. Sometimes I think this might be because of negligence on the part of the secretarial staff: I call for an appointment, they promise to call me back, they never do, I call them back, they say they are waiting on me to drop off a hard-copy of my informed consent sheet so they can pass it on for review before the executive sees me, I drop it off, I don’t hear back, I call them up and ask if the executive has received the form, then they say that I shouldn’t have dropped off the form and the proper procedure would have been to call first. Then I tell them I did call first and was told that I’d have to drop off the form, to which they respond that I had best start over by calling tomorrow and asking for an appointment. This cycle repeats, and this time they tell me I should email first. Then I email, don’t hear back, call, am told my call will be returned, wait, call back, and then they ask why I haven’t dropped a paper copy of my informed consent sheet off. In some cases I eventually hit on the right combination of secretaries and media and manage to get an interview scheduled. There are still a few offices, however, where I have saturated them with every conceivable form of information about my project and still have had no luck.

There are legitimate reasons for this, I suppose. This endless round of broken promises to “call you back” and repeated requests for the same information you have already sent people twice does act inadvertently (“never blame on malice what can be explained by incompetence”) as a filter to screen out random people who are looking to waste executives’ time. However in my case I have a legitimate reason to speak to these people, particularly as most businesses in PNG — and especially the mining and petroleum sector — are hyper-committed to transparency in order to stave off accusations that they are secretive greedy capitalists. So while business might be well served by keeping some people away from executives, I do not believe they are well served keeping me away from them. I certainly have never been refused an interview when I have gotten through to the person in question and, frankly, I think people enjoy talking with me — it is not often that you get a chance to talk about things that interest you with someone who understands in relatively good detail what you are on about.

Of course, even if it is true that I am the sort of person who should be able to get a meeting with the country manager of a major corporation, this fact might not be apparent to the front office: I mean, how often do you have anthropologists calling up and scheduling appointments? So I think my status confuses people as well. The first step of my research was to visit all of these offices and ask for annual reports and other publicly available documentation so that when I did interview representatives from these companies I wouldn’t have to ask moronic questions like: “so, do you currently have a mine operating in PNG?” There are a few offices of mining companies that I have walked into – typically the ones who have ‘environmental issues’ — and begun describing who I am only to see the smile on the face of the secretary tighten into a rictus, as if they were preparing to not lose their composure when I chain myself to the desk and start carving the words ‘no more riverine tailings disposal’ into my chest wish a pen-knife. When I say that I am only there for a copy of the annual report their relief is palpable.

After a month of attempting to get important people on the phone, it seems to me that this is the best strategy: call as specific a number as you can — if you have the direct line to their personal secretary, call that rather than the main desk. When someone picks up the phone, ask confidently for the person in question by their first name. Make sure you know what their first name is, and how to pronounce it. If they have a nickname that you know they use in the course of daily business, use it. Don’t lie to people about who you are or your relationship with the person you are trying to contact, but don’t request refusal in the guise of asking permission either. If for some reason they do put you on the line directly with the person in question, introduce yourself and schedule an appointment and thank them for the call.

If your call is routed past the first few secretaries and is intercepted by one further up the line — which is the most likely thing that will happen — and they ask who is calling, then introduce yourself in the most formal terms possible. I regularly describe myself as “Dr. Alex Golub, a professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa”. If you are doing dissertation fieldwork on a Fulbright, introduce yourself as “Ms. Jane Smith, a Fulbright Scholar from the University of X.” Don’t embellish or brag: “at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, a world center for the study of the Asia-Pacific”. This is just gross. But do present yourself in the most formal light and don’t be self-effacing. You have official titles for a reason and you shouldn’t be afraid to use them judiciously.

Just, you know, don’t make up extra titles for yourself. I haven’t gotten very far in the offices where I’ve introduced myself as Professorsaurus Rex.