People Analytics and Humanizing Networks: How Teams Can Work Better feat. Ben Waber

Measuring informal interactions can improve the chances of a major project's success. Ben Waber, CEO and co-founder of Humanyze, stresses the importance of these hidden social levers and networks within your teams to facilitate better communication. He points out that organizations can improve workplace performance with the right employee analytics tools.  

In this episode, he shares stories from his book, People Analytics. Learn how managers and human resources teams can use network metrics to look at the big picture, identify communication gaps, and improve teamwork. 

Episode Quotes:

What is a big, fundamental change happening in the workplace that helps companies understand their teams better?

The bulk of how work happens is, that these more informal networks, these collaboration patterns, and these changes. And that not just in the digital world, but also the physical world with more sensors, with other things that can help us understand face-to-face interaction. We can just understand at an unprecedented level of detail what's going on. What that means is not just that we have a better idea about what's happening, but that we can also start to test the decisions we make. And we can, of course, ideally make better decisions. But we’re still, I'd say, very much in the early phases of that, where there's still just this only growing awareness that this is possible.

How can companies use people analytics to bring real value to organizations and management science?

So, imagine a factory floor because people bring that up: ‘Hey, that’s a quantified environment. It should matter how you spend time’. And it does. But now imagine that you’re a factory floor worker and that I want you to produce ten widgets an hour. Now, maybe you figured out a better way to produce those widgets so that you can do 11 widgets an hour. Now, if you spent an hour of your day helping your coworkers learn that new method, your individual performance will go down, right? So, you would go to nine. And so, a dumb algorithm, which lots of companies are doing this exact thing, would say, ‘Hey, your productivity is down, you’re fired.’ Versus what they care about. What do they care about? Well, actually spending that hour dramatically improves the performance of everybody at the company. So, you want that. And this is why I really think that this individual focus of a lot of these technologies are fundamentally misguided. Because really, the value of organizations, again, its people coming together to do things they couldn’t do themselves.

Why is it important to consider duration of data gathering and qualitative, and subjective analysis when reviewing team performance?

It’s that these numbers alone certainly help focus your attention on things, but you’re invariably not going to get the whole picture even understanding this real, massive depth of insight into how work is happening. What you can do now, is say, ‘hey, here’s some team that is super overworked.’ Or, then again, we talk about the remote work environment today. These are the teams that appear to be most impacted in terms of how they collaborate. But it doesn’t tell you why those are happening. And so, that’s where the subjective, qualitative side comes in and says, okay well, it turns out that we’ve got some huge supply chain issues. So, this team is doing something super differently than they were before. It totally makes sense. This team, it actually is concerning because they should be doing the same thing. No algorithm is ever going to figure that out.

Time Code Guide:

00:01:25 The big fundamental change happening in the workplace that helps companies understand their teams better

00:05:25 How did data capture in social science changed and how did this flow back to management science?

00:10:46 Using sports team that use analytics to extract the best performance from a team

00:13:03 How the pandemic help advanced the data-driven model in improving work

00:15:22 How science networks helped us to rethink how people work

00:20:12 The importance of cohesion in the context of network

00:24:34 Understanding how density of interaction affects the depth of the network connection

00:29:36 Will aggregating enough data on software and development enable large companies to spot the network patterns predictive of bugs or defect downstream?

00:32:42 How do walls and cubicles affect how we work

00:34:47 Virtual happy hours and new creative ways to promote nonwork interactions

00:36:45 The challenges of remote work

00:41:47 Infectious disease models as model of transmission of ideas and information

00:49:07 Measuring the impact of specialists and generalists in terms of breaking silos

00:54:20 How can the HR team rethink its role in terms of facilitating optimal information flow in the organization

00:59:12 The configuration of physical space and how it’s shaping information flow

Show Links:

Guest Profile:

• Profile at Stern Speakers
• Profile at M.I.T.
• Ben Waber on LinkedIn
• Ben Waber on Twitter

His Work:

• Humanyze Official Website
• Articles on Work Design Magazine
• People Analytics: How Social Sensing Technology Will Transform Business and What It Tells Us about the Future of Work