Sociologists and corporate anthropologists have long known that humans tend to instinctively cluster into communities. Similarly, human communities instinctively develop leaders and followers. This is especially interesting in business operations, because the communities people form often fail to conform to the organizational structure and hierarchy created by management.
Mapping out the actual communities in an organization is a well-understood, but difficult and time-consuming, process that few companies bother to do. But some researchers at Hewlett-Packard seem to have come up with a way of doing it by simply monitoring email traffic, based solely on who sends mail to who. Without even looking at the contents of any emails, but simply aggreggating the data on the "To:" and "From" fields. The calculations could be--in fact, were--done on a low-cost desktop PC and some fairly straightforward software.
The potential applications are interesting, because they could change how forward-thinking companies do business, making it easier to identify the most effective people in an organization, and identifying corporate structures that aren't working or could be improved. Or, if nothing else, it might just lead to greater recognition that informal groups get more done than previously realized, and should be allowed to flourish unhampered by management interference.
The paper itself--Email as Spectroscopy: Automated Discovery of Community Within Organizations--is a PDF, so you'll need Acrobat Reader or something similar. It's also dry and technical, because it's intended for a technical audience. But if you're a science geek like me, you'll probably find it worth a read.
>The potential applications are interesting, because they could change how forward-thinking companies do business, making it easier to identify the most effective people in an organization,
The ones not forming cliques as indicated by the email?
> Or, if nothing else, it might just lead to greater recognition that informal groups get more done than previously realized,
But how to indentify those groups as opposed to the email goofs?
> and should be allowed to flourish unhampered by management interference.
Rules are for fools. Work is for fools.
I find it interesting how people these days have turned the word "clique," which was originally a very negative term for groups which intentionally and maliciously excluded others for social status purposes (and usually practiced by children) and turned it into a description of any informal group that meets and interacts regularly.
In any modern organization, email is essential, and if you're not using it then you're not following company procedure.
Any fool who actually works in any medium to large-sized organization knows that informal channels are the path through which huge amounts of work get done.
This particular fool has a good amount of experience with the sort of organizations you describe and he has found that it is individuals and not groups who are effective in terms of being productive.
How lame is a management structure that its managers and supervisors who are on the spot cannot discern its better people? How is this same lame going to do better in reading the tea leaves of email?
I think you are promoting a bullshitter's paradise.
Here's one handy way to determine the leaders of an organization via e-mail. ;)
It has been my experience that management is often utterly clueless as to who its most effective people and groups are. It is also my experience that the likelihood that this is so goes up roughly an order of magnitude for every 50 or so people employed in an organization.
I love the notion that handing management better ways of identifying problems and bottlenecks is "promoting a bullshitter's paradise." I presume that the only person who would say this has no actual management experience--or is a lousy manager who everyone hates working for.
It is also my experience arguing with someone who very obviously has not read the paper under discussion is really pointless.
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Jerry: I've also noticed this negative consequence of email. Of course, some of the email "bullying" spoken of us probably perception and not reality--i.e. managers who aren't very diplomatic or thoughtful via email. But I've seen passive-aggressive, nice-to-your-face-rude-in-writing behavior enough to know that sometimes it's real.
Just one of the many drawbacks to new technologies. Nothing is ever 100% positive or 100% negative.
"It has been my experience that management is often utterly clueless as to who its most effective people and groups are."
Or they don't care.
." I presume that the only person who would say this has no actual management experience--or is a lousy manager who everyone hates working for."
I've never been a manager but I've known many both before and after promotion.
"It is also my experience arguing with someone who very obviously has not read the paper under discussion is really pointless."
I looked at the pdf and it's nicely techie but says naught about how people act in organizations.
At my workplace, we definitely have formed our own informal workgroups. In my case, we have people from four different departments -- AV, logistics, production, video graphics. These are our "GO TO Guys and Gals". No manager put us together, no account executive assigned individuals to the projects. These are just the people you know you have to talk to in order to DODGE the bullshit and get things done. I don't rely on my manager to tell me what to do or how to do my job. That's why he hired me... so he doesn't have to pay attention to those details. I know what my responsibilities are. Our company has about 100 full-time employees and perhaps half as many again freelancers working at any one time. As projects change, the particular tasks we each perform also change. But the core names remain the same. This doesn't make us an e-mail clique. Simply an effective work force.
Yeah. Having worked at a lot of places, you also quickly find out that there are certain people who are very much bottlenecks to getting things done, and others who are "enablers" who will help you cut through the B.S. and get things done.
These are normal parts of the human dynamic.