strategy+business

The Science of Subtle Signals

by Mark Buchanan

from strategy+business issue 48, Autumn 2007 reprint number 07307

© 2007 Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. All rights reserved. Reprint

 of Subtle
The Science
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 features business models
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By analyzing overlooked behavioral cues,

researchers are creating a new
understanding of organizational effectiveness.

Signals by Mark
Buchanan
 Previous pages: Mark Buchanan
Professor Alex Pentland (mark.buchanan@wanadoo.fr)
(seated) and researchers at is the author of The Social
the MIT Media Lab Human Atom: Why the Rich Get
Dynamics Group (from left to Richer, Cheaters Get Caught,
right): Benjamin Waber, and Your Neighbor Usually
Agnes Chang, Taemie Kim, Looks Like You (Bloomsbury
and Koji Ara. USA, 2007). Formerly an editor
with Nature and New Scientist,
he was a guest columnist
for the New York Times in
2007 and holds a Ph.D. in
physics from the University of
Virginia. His Weblog is http://
thesocialatom.blogspot.com/.

In 2006, when Vertex Data Science — a US$724 sounds perky and inviting. If operators do it right,
million private company based near Liverpool, England, they’re almost certain to be successful.” Armed with this
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and one of the world’s largest providers of call center understanding, a company like Vertex can train its oper-
outsourcing — wanted to improve the performance ators to converse more effectively, and can seek new
of its telephone sales operators, the managers went look- hires who exhibit these speech patterns. If a call starts
ing for an unusual kind of self-understanding. They going badly, a supervisor can detect the signs quickly
enlisted the aid of Alex Pentland and his colleagues from enough to switch it to another operator. Early experi-
the Human Dynamics Group at the Massachusetts ments have suggested that these insights can improve a
Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, the elite research company’s telephone sales performance by 20 percent or
institute for digital technology founded by technology more. And the same is true of other forms of corporate
pioneers Nicholas Negroponte and Jerome Wiesner. communication. “In pitching business plans, for
The researchers at the Human Dynamics Group were instance,” Pentland points out, “consistency of tone and
best known for their experiments in human–machine pace is key to getting your plan rated highly.”
interplay and wearable computing: using portable This story is a straightforward tale of managerial
devices built into eyeglasses and clothing to track move- intervention and success. But it also throws down a
ment and other human activity. They traveled to Vertex’s profound challenge to the prevailing views of organiza-
operations offices in Inverness, Scotland, to set up elec- tional effectiveness. Most explanations of human behav-
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tronic devices that analyzed the speech patterns of the ior in the business world presume that people — be
operators on the call center floor. The devices captured they employees, consumers, or executives — are influ-
neither the specific words that the operators used nor enced most by meaning and reasoning. It’s what gets
the logic of their conversations, but only the physical said that matters, not how it is said. But the performance
voice signal: the measured variations in tone and pitch. of these telephone operators and a growing volume of
Even so, Pentland and his researchers predicted accu- other evidence suggest that this view is seriously flawed.
rately, after only a few seconds of listening, the ultimate In a wide variety of facets of everyday business, the
success or failure of almost every call. keys to sustained success may actually lie in understand-
Photographs by Peter Gregoire

Successful operators, it turned out, speak little and ing the kinds of signals that are ordinarily overlooked:
listen much. When they do speak, their voices fluctuate tone of voice, body language, the ways people congre-
strongly in amplitude and pitch, suggesting interest gate (or don’t), the time spent on tasks, the rhythms of
and responsiveness to the customer’s needs. Operators workplace activity, and the patterns of social networks.
who speak with little variation come across as too deter- Those on Pentland’s team — and their counterparts at
mined and authoritative, but by speaking invitingly, other research institutions, such as Xerox’s Palo Alto
being responsive but not pushy, a skilled operator can let Research Center (PARC) and Intel Research in Seattle
callers find their own way to a sale. “Like a mother — are designing new ways to track and make sense of
speaking singsong to a baby,” says Pentland, “variation such indicators. The resulting new science of subtle sig-
 What if sensors could transform
organizational research much
as microscopes transformed medicine
in the 18th and 19th centuries?

nals may lead not just to more profitable sales pitches, about a dozen researchers who have developed a range of
but also to a richer, deeper understanding of the practice small, wearable electronic devices that can easily and

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of management and the way organizations work. accurately gather the kinds of social data needed for such
Anyone in business knows through painful experi- analyses. These devices track not just the physical loca-
ence the pervasive problems that exist because our tion of the people who wear them, but also the finer
knowledge of organizations is imperfect. Key informa- details of a person’s movement— in effect, his or her
tion fails to flow to those who need it, departments fight body language — and several distinct features of his or
with one another, and managers make decisions on fine- her vocal behavior. And by taking note of people’s prox-
sounding theories rather than real information. Most imity to others and the patterns of their movement, the
mergers and acquisitions never realize the “synergies” team can foster new insights into collective human
that were envisioned. All this experience, and more, sug- behavior: the subtle differences between effective and
gests that there is good reason for believing, as organiza- ineffective teams, and the structures and incentives that
tional theorist Elliott Jaques asserted a decade ago, that either improve or block collaboration.
“management is in the same state today that the natural For example, computer scientist Tanzeem
sciences were in during the 17th century.… There is not Choudhury — a former student of Pentland’s currently
one single, well-established concept in the field of man- dividing his time between Intel Research and the
agement on which you can build a testable theory.” University of Washington — and several colleagues have
4
But what if sensors and networks of sensors could begun to experiment with “dense sensors,” wearable
transform organizational research much as microscopes stickers equipped with radio frequency identification
and new forms of dissection transformed medicine in (RFID) transmitters or motion detectors. The data from
the 18th and 19th centuries? Instead of revealing the these sensors can be analyzed and compared to broader
cell and microbe, these devices would uncover patterns community data, such as crime and traffic statistics, to
of activity that usually go unobserved in organizations: build models that describe and even predict the daily
the dynamics of person-to-person relationships and patterns of people’s lives, and their ever-evolving social
the ways they affect managerial decisions and organiza- networks. Choudhury’s team is exploring the idea of
tional practices. Imagine, for example, an automatic designing “smart environments” that would respond
system that could detect a breakdown in the trust on intelligently to people’s needs — automatically intro-
which a creative team depends and flag specific steps ducing crucial information into a discussion, for exam-
that could fix it, or one that could map out the complete ple, even when no single individual might recognize its
flow of information and knowledge within an organiza- vital relevance.
tion — even what happens at the coffee machine or dur- And in a still more ambitious study earlier this year,
ing social gatherings — and identify key hubs of Pentland, teaming with David Lazer and Nancy Katz of
exchange or bottlenecks. Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government,
At the MIT Media Lab, Pentland leads a team of put sensors on hundreds of volunteers and recorded
 streams of data as they went about their business, from
their morning commute through the lunch hour and
into evening, capturing data about each meeting and
encounter. The data revealed precisely who interacted
with whom, how frequently, and whether the interac-
tions happened in the workplace or elsewhere — over a
few beers, for example. If someone gave a presentation
to a group, the sensors would show how stressed he or
she felt, as reflected in variations in the rhythms and
pace of his or her speech; they would also reveal if the
person felt confident and appeared that way to others,
and who in the room responded with genuine interest.
As social network specialists have been saying for
years, beneath the formal organizational chart of any
An MIT Media Lab
company lie hidden webs of social interactions that researcher wearing
we rarely talk about, webs whose existence we may not a sensor that tracks
even acknowledge. The health or dysfunction of these physical movement
to gather data for
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social networks can determine the effectiveness of a analysis of network

team, a large group, or an entire firm. “Ignoring these dynamics.
influences when you’re running a company is crazy,”
argues Pentland, “because the data shows that it is at
least as important as our rational behavior.” To be sure,
most senior executives know full well that the “soft side”
of their operations is the most important enabler of a
well-functioning team or company, but the tools for
monitoring or measuring the soft side have always been
expensive and unreliable. Even the most diligent social
network analysts can’t sit in a corridor and observe a
company for hours on end. They are limited to inter-
viewing or surveying people about whom they commu-
nicate with, and the answers may not always be accurate
or complete. The technologies of sensing and observa-
5
tion may be about to change all that, while increasing
the number of factors and indicators that can be mea-
sured in the process. can balance the desire for workplace privacy with the
In short, these sensors may make it possible to track equally compelling drive to understand how corporations
the unconscious and instinctual side of human behavior, really work — and provide their host companies with
along with the collaborative and social side, in a way that competitive advantage in the bargain.
helps some companies outcompete their rivals. Sensors
may put management research on a much more empir- Mapping Cognitive Channels
ical path, providing fine-grained data that could lead to In 2005, in experiments conducted jointly with Jared
a more innate, reliable understanding of how organiza- Curhan of the MIT Sloan School of Management,
tions work. And like many scientific advances, they may researchers from the Human Dynamics Group asked
also raise a host of new ethical concerns. To understand MBA students to take part in simulated face-to-face
strategy + business issue 48

corporate behavior thoroughly, researchers like Pentland negotiations. One student played a middle manager tak-
and his team have to monitor and analyze people’s behav- ing a job in a new division, and the other the vice pres-
ior in unprecedented detail, putting potentially sensitive ident of that division. They were asked to negotiate the
data on subtle personal cues and social habits into perma- manager’s salary package, with real monetary rewards at
nent computer storage. It’s not yet clear how researchers stake for the participants. The negotiations often lasted
an hour or more. Yet in just five minutes, an electronic College, researchers asked experimental subjects to say
sensor could predict with 87 percent accuracy which which of three lines on a paper matched the length of
person would come out on top, merely by cueing in to another line, using lengths so different that the correct
bodily movements and manner of speech, ignoring answer was obvious. If they heard a number of people
words and strategy. As the sensor data revealed, success- give the same wrong answer, many people followed
ful middle managers tended to be strong on “mirroring” along with the crowd, completely ignoring the clear
behavior — unconscious mimicking of the gestures and input of their senses. Recent experiments conducted
movements of their conversational partners. This with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines by
demonstrated empathy and understanding. In contrast, Gregory Berns of Emory University suggest that peer
the most successful vice presidents tended to talk more pressure can alter how people actually see the lines.
and control the pace of the conversation, a social behav- In other words, people in group situations don’t
ior that the researchers referred to as “engagement.” For consciously weigh the options and then deliberately (or
both participants, a consistent emphatic tone, conveying timidly) choose to conform. Instead, the conforming
confidence, was also critical. happens automatically and unconsciously. Those dy-
This type of research confirms in the business set- namics happen so often, and so consistently, that they
ting what some psychologists have suspected for years inevitably play a role in the ways people make decisions
— that human behavior can often be predicted with re- in the business world. But this unconscious behavioral

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markable accuracy by paying attention to so-called thin channel is generally ignored in most management think-
slices of what people do. Malcolm Gladwell popularized ing; even a writer like Gladwell, whose work often falls
this concept in his 2005 book, Blink. After watching 15 at the nexus of business and psychology, didn’t recognize
minutes of video of a married couple conversing, trained that these behavioral channels are so obvious that they
observers can tell with 90 percent accuracy whether the can be picked up by machine.
marriage will last. By observing a doctor speaking with a The idea of using sensors to capture these subtle sig-
patient for 45 seconds and attending only to his or her nals began to emerge in the late 1980s. At PARC, a
pitch, rhythm, and intonation — which convey warmth young researcher named Mark Weiser coined the phrase
or lack of it — analysts can identify those doctors likely “ubiquitous computing” in 1988; he distributed elec-
to be sued for malpractice. tronic badges that transmitted information about where
In short, people have two distinct “channels” of PARC employees were walking, so that people working
communication — the obvious verbal and rational there could see crowds forming on electronic displays.
channel, through which information flows linguistically, Weiser, who later became PARC’s director of research,
and a nonlinguistic channel that we often ignore, but passed away in 1999; by that time, other researchers,
that carries at least as much information. including John Seely Brown, Xerox’s chief scientist, and
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From an anthropological point of view, it’s not sur- Alex Pentland at the Media Lab, had begun linking
prising that a lot of human influence takes place non- ubiquitous computing with the emerging idea of social
verbally. Apes, chimpanzees, and other primates — our network research, tracking the patterns of connection in
close evolutionary cousins — lack anything like our informal communication among people.
facility for language, yet still lead sophisticated social Pentland began developing technology to probe
lives. They organize groups for hunting, collective network influences after an experience in the early
defense, and child rearing. All this takes place through 2000s serving on the board of a Media Lab initiative to
nonlinguistic means, by displays of power, meaningful create spin-off laboratories overseas. Nothing in that ini-
noises, and facial expressions. Instincts for this kind of tiative had gone quite as planned.
communication enabled humans’ ancestors to form “We had some of the most brilliant and powerful
strong, cohesive groups, and human beings still possess people in the world,” he recalls, “but our work was a dis-
those instincts, alongside more recently evolved talents aster, just an incredible disaster. People were making
for language and reason. decisions that were, on the face of it, ridiculous. Two
Some of the most famous social psychology research days later you’d think, ‘How in the world did I go along
of the last century documented the extent of group with that?’ It was as if your brain had been turned off.”
influence on individuals. For example, in a 1951 exper- Pentland’s board experience led him to recognize
iment directed by Solomon Asch at Swarthmore the enormous power of nonverbal communication. The
 It may seem reductionist to try
to understand people through signals from
gadgets hooked up to their belts, but a
number of major organizations have lined up.

leading directors were all extremely charismatic and build up accurate pictures of the networks of friends or
certain of themselves; everyone else went along with co-workers to which the students belonged and identify
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whatever they said, almost without thinking. “This ex- their most important social links.
perience really affected me,” says Pentland. He began The ultimate aim of this kind of work — as anoth-
studying the scientific literature on nonlinguistic human er collaborator, Mark Mortensen of the Sloan School,
communication, a body of research that is extensive, but points out — is to go far beyond the capabilities of tra-
mostly qualitative. And then he focused on building ditional social network analysis, which mostly relies on
devices to measure that communication. “You need human recall, with all its attendant weaknesses. “A lot of
instruments,” he says, “because as people we can’t really workplace communication takes place through sponta-
observe others objectively.” neous interactions, the watercooler kind of stuff,” he
The instruments he and his colleagues developed says. “You can sit people down with paper and ask them
exploit modern telecommunications technology in a who they interacted with, how, when, and so on over the
number of ways. They can program personal digital last three months, but the results are always biased.”
assistants (PDAs) and specially configured “smart” cell Those limitations, says Mortensen, make current
phones to keep track of their owners’ proximity to oth- analyses of team behavior inadequate. “People decide to
ers, using the unique identifiers built into cell phone and work on something, in virtual teams or whatever, and
Bluetooth transmitters to identify each individual’s loca- afterward, if they didn’t kill anyone, they write a book
7
tion. Other electronic badges complement these locators about it. But what they say is purely anecdotal and
with more precise position measurements — based on there’s no science in it. We want to begin building a real
global positioning system (GPS) data, they are accurate science that is quantitative.”
within two meters — as well as capturing audio signals
and measuring upper-body movements with an elec- Self-Awareness, Stress, and Groupthink
tronic accelerometer. It may seem overly reductionist to try to understand
Gathering this data is just the first step. Pentland people through signals from gadgets hooked to their
and computer scientist Nathan Eagle have developed a belts. But a number of major organizations have already
method they call “reality mining” for analyzing and lined up to try it out. In collaboration with Thomas
drawing meaning from the data. In one study, about Malone of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence,
100 students carried reprogrammed Nokia cell phones Pentland’s research team has begun to use sensors to
around with them for nine months; researchers then observe creative group behavior at a major German
strategy + business issue 48

analyzed the voluminous data set for patterns in the bank. (One preliminary finding: People who maintain
behaviors of both individuals and groups. They found lots of e-mail and face-to-face contact report high job
they could make accurate predictions on where any per- satisfaction and personal productivity; those who social-
son was likely to be seen at a certain time of day, and ize less, even with the intention of getting more work
whom they’d probably be talking with. They could also done, express overall less satisfaction.) Soon, working
with Eric Brynjolfsson at the MIT Center for Digital communication channel, they would largely ignore the
Business, they’ll be helping network hardware company reactions that matter most.
Cisco Systems improve one of its emergency call centers. The sensors could be used in other applications as
The Human Dynamics Group from the Media Lab is well. For example, many studies have shown that work-
also running projects with automobile engineering place burnout is a serious issue that costs companies mil-
teams at Nissan, with several universities, and with a lions each year. But because people tend to hide stress,
Boston hospital. (Indeed, sensor technology may well it can be very difficult, if not impossible, to detect.
have medical applications, as two clinical trials showed Sensors may change all that. In a trial study, Pentland
that a significant lack of social signaling activity, readily and student Michael Sung fixed physiological sensors on
detected by the sensors, correlated strongly with well- students playing poker for real monetary stakes, and
known signs of clinical depression.) monitored bodily movements, skin conductance, and
In the business setting, a company might use this heart rate. They found that they could identify mo-
type of computer-augmented self-awareness to train its ments of especially high stress (as later reported by the
negotiators. Or its sales force. By identifying social sig- participants) with 80 percent accuracy. They could also

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nals linked to persuasiveness, a manager could help tell about 70 percent of the time when players were
salespeople train themselves to achieve better results bluffing. Pentland suggests that this kind of monitoring
without necessarily working harder. Since the most per- might be useful for identifying people who are poten-
suasive gestures, body language, and voice styles can tially headed for burnout, and who therefore require
be identified, a CEO giving frequent pitches to share- more detailed monitoring.
holders could presumably be trained to do so far more One could easily list hundreds of other ways that
effectively. In another setting, companies hiring new sensors might make enterprise more efficient. Im-
staff might use sensors to match their employees more proving our understanding of individual behavior and
effectively to their jobs. Someone who is genuinely what influences it may be only the beginning.
8
interested in a project (or in any endeavor) tends to dis- Mortensen foresees wiring up an entire team, division,
play lots of activity and variability in both voice and ges- or company, and gathering real information quickly on
ture, and often speaks more rapidly. who interacts with whom, what kind of knowledge they
Alternatively, a company might use sensors to mon- share, and whether the interactions are successful. With
itor the response of a new hire as he or she mingles with networks of social sensors, organizations may soon be
the different project teams and comes into direct contact mounting a scientific, data-driven attack on the most
with the teams’ work. By basing staff placements on baffling and damaging problems they face — those that
observations of these real-life (but usually ignored) reac- stem from the myriad and mysterious dysfunctions
tions, an organization could create a more fulfilling and affecting groups.
productive environment. And marketers are already For example, the most serious problems con-
beginning to use wireless sensors to see how people fronting modern organizations may not be individual
respond to a new product design, both consciously and problems but group issues: internal polarization
unconsciously. After all, about 80 percent of all new that inhibits discussion, or endemic “groupthink.”
products still fall well short of sales expectations, even Teams drift toward mindless decisions because no in-
though companies spend millions on focus groups and dividual wants to “stand out” from the perceived con-
surveys to probe consumer interest. If these traditional sensus. These and other dysfunctions are extremely
methods rely too much on the conscious, linguistic difficult to detect before they cause damage, because
 they involve nearly invisible patterns in the behavior of acted with whom, but precisely when, so managers and
many individuals. employees alike can see how activity in one place — say
Using social network analysis, however, organiza- at an engineering department at corporate headquarters
tions have been able to improve information flow — flows out to influence production far away, at a fac-
among different parts of their operations. Research led tory, for example. This is the kind of thing sensors can
by Steve Borgatti, chair of the organization studies get at, but questionnaires and surveys cannot.
department at Boston College’s Carroll School of It is not yet clear, of course, how corporations will
Management, has used surveys and interviews to map handle the understandable concerns of employees and
interactions between the engineering and manufactur- customers about the Big Brother intrusiveness of this
ing departments of a large organization. Borgatti and his type of data gathering. As with Google’s “street view”
colleagues discovered a problem that no executive could feature, in which images taken on public streets by a rov-
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have been aware of — that almost all communication ing camera are routinely posted on the Internet as a part
between the two groups passed through one particularly of the search engine’s mapping service, the perceived
skilled and approachable person, who was consequently danger lies in the breadth of observation. People can
overwhelmed and often behind schedule. After identify- never be quite sure what activity will be gathered and
ing this hidden problem, executives introduced other inadvertently exposed in the random tracking of an
go-betweens to share the load and improve the depart- unsupervised set of sensors. Knowing this, people might
ments’ coordination. censor themselves more, thereby cutting back the very
type of informal and free-form creativity that most busi-
Sensors and Sensibility nesses need more of.
Sensors, working all the time or close to it, could gather Pentland, Mortensen, and the other researchers
far more accurate data about information flows happen- insist that the ethical challenges the use of sensors raises
ing on a minute-by-minute basis. In one study, after must be taken seriously if the technology is really to be
constructing a social diagram of a company, the Human beneficial. “Companies shouldn’t just look at this as
Dynamics Group researchers could actually see polariza- another way to spy on employees,” says Pentland. Using
tion taking place — as if the company had been put sensors for monitoring and control would be a surefire
9
under a microscope. “You’ll see two people going at it in recipe for resentment and loss of morale, he says.
a meeting,” says Pentland, “and then polarization grow- Several ideas might help companies prevent
ing around them,” reflected in the way people respond problems. Pentland suggests, for example, that the tech-
to the two main figures, and gather around them in dis- nology ought to be used on a voluntary basis, with indi-
tinct factions. Analysis of the sensory data in this case viduals adopting it because they learn the benefits that it
showed two people, in particular, trying to lead — both brings for both themselves and the company. An organ-
very active, with voice and body language conveying ization could store information on individuals’ own per-
determination and authority. Neither individual showed sonal computers, rather than in a central location. It
the kind of mimicry or voice variation that would con- might also give people the opportunity, at the end of
vey empathy; in other words, neither backed down. each day, to review the data that’s been recorded about
Soon others began to be recruited into the two opposing their activities. They could have the option of deleting
teams. If a manager saw this type of pattern in real time, anything they’d prefer to keep private. The devices
strategy + business issue 48

he or she could tune in to the emerging problem and try might be fitted with an additional button that would
to defuse it — addressing the root of the tension and erase, say, the last 10 minutes of data, or data collection
helping the two sides get through it. might be strictly limited to teams, time frames, and
Another valuable asset of sensors is their ability to workplace settings where there has been explicit agree-
track patterns over time. They show not only who inter- ment in advance to allow the analysis. Although all these
possibilities reduce the amount and quality of data that problem exists. It will monitor team dynamics through
would be gathered, some steps along such lines will be time, catching patterns of stress or stagnation, and inter-
crucial for giving people confidence that their privacy is vening to keep people working together creatively. And
being protected. it will uncover social patterns that today we cannot even
If privacy issues can be resolved, a new world of recognize or talk about, but which can explain, more
organizational understanding may be at hand. History definitively than ever before, the shining success of one
teaches us that data, when it becomes available, leads to company and the dismal failure of another. +
powerful transformations of human understanding and Reprint No. 07307
capability. For example, the great scientific break-
through of Johannes Kepler, working out the laws of
planetary motion, was made possible by the painstaking
Resources

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astronomical observations gathered during the last sev-
eral decades of the 16th century by the Danish stargaz- Edward Baker, “When Teams Fail: The Virtual Distance Challenge,” s+b
er Tycho Brahe with his own handmade instruments. Leading Idea, 5/22/07, www.strategy-business.com/li/leadingideas/li00026:
In the 1980s, grocery stores first introduced bar- An intriguing example of organizational sensibility: Far-flung teams are
more effective when members feel operational or cultural affinity.
codes merely as a technology to improve checkout
Mark Buchanan, The Social Atom: Why the Rich Get Richer, Cheaters
efficiency and keep inventory automatically. But the Get Caught, and Your Neighbor Usually Looks Like You (Bloomsbury
resulting oceans of data on product flows have now USA, 2007): The author of this article lays out the knowledge of patterns
completely transformed the retail business. Two decades of behavior in social systems, based on models, observation, and
quantum physics. Updated on Buchanan’s Weblog, http://thesocialatom
from now, we may be saying the same thing about the .blogspot.com/.
wave of sensors currently poised to invade corporate life.
Tanzeem Choudhury, Matthai Philipose, Danny Wyatt, and Jonathan
By probing the otherwise invisible social interactions on Lester, “Towards Activity Databases: Using Sensors and Statistical Models
which organizations ultimately depend, these sensors to Summarize People’s Lives,” Data Engineering Bulletin, March 2006,
available (with other papers) at www.intel-research.net/seattle/
will make it possible to explain scientifically why a cre- publications.asp: Summary of Intel research on “smart environments.”
ative design team suddenly became dull and uninspired,
Malcolm Gladwell, Blink! The Power of Thinking without Thinking (Little,
why a group of brilliant advisors made a series of inane Brown, 2005): On the human propensity for snap judgments, which sen- 77
decisions, or why two groups on whose open sharing sors may enhance — or degrade.
of details the company’s welfare depended had great dif- Art Kleiner, “Elliott Jaques Levels with You,” s+b, First Quarter 2001,
ficulty in speaking to one another. Today’s executives www.strategy-business.com/press/article/10938: Source of the quote about
17th-century science and modern management.
and management theorists can only guess the answers to
puzzles like these, but tomorrow they’ll have the equip- Karen Otazo, “On Trust and Culture,” s+b, Autumn 2006, www.strategy-
business.com/press/article/06311: Overview of the literature on social net-
ment to find answers by direct measurement. work analysis, studying organizations by tracking “who you know.”
Pentland, Mortensen, and their colleagues refer to Alex Pentland’s MIT Media Lab home page, http://web.media.mit.edu/
the future organization that knows itself through sensing ~sandy/: Source on the Human Dynamics Group and relevant papers.
technology and manages itself accordingly as the “sensi- Connectedness Weblog, http://connectedness.blogspot.com: Definitive
ble organization.” It will monitor the flow of informa- blog on social network analysis trends by researcher Bruce Hoppe.
tion between its departments and between facilities, and Managerial Network Analysis, www.socialnetworkanalysis.com: Steve
make accurate maps of where its key knowledge resides Borgatti’s Web site, with links to his research.
so that employees can easily tap into the resources they “Remembering Mark Weiser,” 1999, www-sul.stanford.edu/weiser/
need. On the basis of knowledge, the sensible organiza- index.html: Memorial site for the pioneer of ubiquitous computing
contains a biography and links to sources of research and commentary.
tion will promote the kind of communications that can
For more articles on organizations and people, sign up for s+b’s RSS feed
build trust and move quickly to defuse emerging prob- at www.strategy-business.com/rss.
lems, even before the people in the organization know a
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