Away from the org chart: new approaches to understanding interaction

Face to face interaction is more predictive of organisational outcomes than any other collaboration metric to date, but studies have shown that only about 20% of this interaction can be predicted by the org chart. That was the starting point in the latest WORKTECH webinar, a thought-provoking discussion on the power of organisational networks featuring Philip Ross of UnWork and Ben Waber of Humanyze. With many organisations turning their attention to the future of their real estate portfolio in the wake of extensive remote working, Ross identified that the temptation is to squeeze space by the org chart. However, this doesn’t reflect the real work that’s taking place, making the question of who to bring in and when crucially important. Waber gave an overview of the potential of multimodal data to illuminate the true patterns of interaction within an organisation, allowing for evidence-based, real-time decisions about when to bring people together. Watch a rerun of the WORKTECH webinar here: