Anybody who works with people knows that information doesn't always flow where it is meant to flow, that departments fight each other rather than support each other, and that manages base their decisions on cool sounding strategies rather than on actual facts. In the words of the organisation theorist Elliot Jaques "management is in the same state today that the natural sciences were during the seventeenth century. There is no one single wheel established concept in the field of management on which you can build a testable theory.Why do some teams work well together and others badly? What are the subtle differences between functioning and non functioning strictures? The answer is that we don't know. But what we do know Thanks to US journalist Mark Buchanan, is that communication takes place on two levels. We say and how we say it.
MIT's Media Lab monitored creative teams at a major bank in order to find the answers to these questions: Who is saying what to whom? Who moves on and when, how often and where to? In what tone of voice is A speaking to B? Who is stressed, who seems to be suffering from burnout?
What sounds like big brother is called 'reality mining' and in the case of the bank it revealed the following. That those who talked alot wit others and who read alot of emails- private as well as work related- seemed generally happier and also more productive than those who concentrated only on work.
Who do you talk to most of all? Whose opinion do you value most?
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