On the Talented Apps blog, Mark Bennett posted a discussion about evidence-based management, and how non-traditional techniques can provide important evidence -- maybe even help a manager convert some intangibles into tangibles. Mark was responding to a recent CIO article that described how Steve Randle, a VP at XO Communications, realized his organization was successful "because of employees' knowledge and relationships—and he wanted to document it." So he went looking for different types of evidence about his group's performance -- things that conventional HR practices and business metrics could never measure.
After discovering social network analysis, XO's Randle used it to assess who knew what in his organization, beginning with a 4-question survey: "Who do you go to for advice or information when assessing a difficult problem or discussing ideas? Who do you depend on to get your job done? Who do you communicate with most frequently? and Who is your most valued contact within XO IT Operations?" Each respondent could name up to three people in their answers. Then those answers "were used to generate a set of network diagrams called sociograms, similar in form to a router network diagram. In a sociogram, the network nodes represent people, and the connections between nodes indicate communication between individuals. One sociogram showed nodes that were sized according to the number of ties connecting an individual. 'It was immediately apparent which people were central to my organization and who had many ties to others on my team,' says Randle."
Mark at Talented Apps said another "takeaway for us is that we can and should gather evidence, even on intangibles, and apply it in Talent Management. Articles like this are very helpful in showing *how* to do that.... [W]ithout real metrics and evidence, we are left with the increased risk of making the wrong decision (including making no decision) in areas around hard to measure things like whether employees are more productive if they are more connected. Once we go beyond measuring activities (e.g. number of reviews completed, number of candidates interviewed) we quickly arrive at intangibles (e.g. competencies, performance rating, engagement, contribution). With hard to measure tangibles and intangibles, we often end up left with basing our decisions on:
- Anecdote - 'I heard of some more connected people being more productive.'
- Gut Feel/Intuition - 'It just seems to me more connected people will be more productive.'
- Conventional Wisdom - 'Everybody knows that more connected people are more productive.'
There’s nothing wrong about factoring those things in, but we should always be testing them against the evidence." I say: Amen to that.
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