Reality Mining For Companies Or How Social Networks Network Best

MIT professor and Sense Networks co-founder Alex Pentland, author of Honest Signals, provides data on how and why people take information in and make decisions. Here's a description of his book from Amazon:

"How can you know when someone is bluffing? Paying attention? Genuinely interested? The answer, writes Sandy Pentland in Honest Signals, is that subtle patterns in how we interact with other people reveal our attitudes toward them. These unconscious social signals are not just a back channel or a complement to our conscious language; they form a separate communication network. Biologically based "honest signaling," evolved from ancient primate signaling mechanisms, offers an unmatched window into our intentions, goals, and values. If we understand this ancient channel of communication, Pentland claims, we can accurately predict the outcomes of situations ranging from job interviews to first dates.

Pentland, an MIT professor, has used a specially designed digital sensor worn like an ID badge—a "sociometer"—to monitor and analyze the back-and-forth patterns of signaling among groups of people. He and his researchers found that this second channel of communication, revolving not around words but around social relations, profoundly influences major decisions in our lives—even though we are largely unaware of it. Pentland presents the scientific background necessary for understanding this form of communication, applies it to examples of group behavior in real organizations, and shows how by "reading" our social networks we can become more successful at pitching an idea, getting a job, or closing a deal. Using this "network intelligence" theory of social signaling, Pentland describes how we can harness the intelligence of our social network to become better managers, workers, and communicators."

I particularly found his contrast between organizational charts and actual communication patterns fascinating. For those of us who have lived through multiple reorganizations, you know that your friends and personal networks rarely change. Instead, how cool would it be to have a real time dashboard of how the organization is truly communicating and collaborating, built entirely upon aggregated data from emails, calendar entries, and proximity information? If you find this terribly intrusive, you're not alone. What if the data analysis was transparent and accessible to anyone within the organization? Might there be more benefits to having this unique perspective on life inside an organization?

As an example, let's say there are five primary groups involved with a new product launch (engineering, art, design, QA, and marketing). Instead of simply relying on milestone updates and face to face meetings, a CEO could look at real time data (ie, interaction) flow across and within groups and see that QA is not involved in any real "flow" early on in product design. Since quality engineering is a strategic effort, and change happens slowly, she may do more active coaching ASAP with the interested parties to help remove barriers to more effective collaboration.

From an HR perspective, this begins to offer new realities:

• Mentoring: forget HR matching people...let's let employees select their mentors (topic specific or longer term) by searching and matching based on user defined criteria
  
• Manager development: who sits in the office all day versus walking around and is there a correlation between retention of top talent? Are top managers interacting with all levels of the organization?
  
• Productivity: how do these social patterns impact the probabilities of best practice adoption? Adults are 8x as likely to ask a neighbor for advice, even if that neighbor is not the best person to ask. Making the best knowledge and mentors available, and showing people who's adopting the new techniques can dramatically influence people's decisions to change their habits. It's the difference between a pull versus push approach to change management.
  
• Morale: Which teams have a balance between in-person and electronic interaction? What are the implications for employee engagement data?
• Group Dynamics and Talent Development: Are our best people also the hub for intra-team communication? In other words, have they becomes so indispensable that they're actually a drain on overall productivity because everyone has to ask them for answers? If we can share that data with them then we can understand and make informed decisions about developing others' knowledge and influencing group dynamics differently.
  

So how does this become a mutually beneficial arrangement? Pentland says there are three key truths that must happen in our new world:

1. You have the right to possess your data;
2. You control the use of your data;
3. You have the right to dispose or distribute your data

These seem very reasonable to me and will cause big changes in the tone and policies of organizational life and the governments more active role in protecting privacy. This is a "when" not a "if" question for leaders but if the data is properly used it can be a hugely positive impact for society.

Many thanks to Greg Scott of Somedios.com for bringing this great information to my attention. Somedios is dedicated to helping organizations figure out their social media strategy.