A commercial producer of software used in industrial settings came to us to validate the effectiveness of their product. Their programs integrate functional communication, in the form of work orders, with social communication, in the form of informal chats, to improve their customers’ team performance.
We applied our analytic services to their data set to determine the value of their commercial operation’s product. We were able to identify which aspects of their product provide performance improvements and which aspects could be redesigned to better serve their customers.
A key finding was that software and other tools designed to facilitate the functional aspects of coordinating team members will lead to better improvements in performance than those focusing on structural aspects.
Approach
We analyzed how well the client’s software facilitated the team dynamics of their customers. Understanding how individuals aggregate into teams, and how teams form organizations, is essential to maintaining cohesion and improving performance at scale. Communication is key for establishing interdependencies among individual actions, including managers assigning tasks to workers, workers reporting to managers, and cross communication in informal settings.
We studied the client data set of 38,137 distinct users from 197 corporations over a period of five years. Visualizing their communications records as networks gives us insight into the structure and performance of their customers.
Results
Functional communication networks take on an asymmetrical, hub-spoke structure. Most employees are not assigning work-orders, but receiving them, and they only seem to communicate with their superiors.
Social communication networks are segregated by job roles. Employees have a clear preference for interacting with co-workers who have a similar job-title.
Comparing the network structures of individual organizations with their work order completion performance provides further insights:
Smaller organizations with fewer functional communications are more likely to complete work orders on time or ahead of schedule. Despite the use of the client’s task distribution technologies, the functional way work is organized remains relevant to effective performance.
Organizations with denser social communications perform better. The more communications between unique employees, the better. The informal communications facilitated by the client’s products play a role in the self-organization of high-performing organizations.