There is much hype around ‘Big Data’ and ‘the Internet of Things’ currently in business and management circles. Quite right too: as this blog by the Chartered Management Institute demonstrates, intelligent systems can help us reduce waste and carbon emissions, and support enlightened leadership.
The exhortation needs balancing, however, with an urge to modernise our approaches to governance and management. If IT had been introduced at the same pace at which we follow the evidence base on people management, we wouldn’t have got round to the mainframe yet. It is 80 years since the Hawthorne experiments clearly showed the significance of morale and commitment in the workplace, yet employee engagement is still only taken seriously in a minority of workplaces.
The best way to implement Big Data is to remember that data is supposed to serve people, not the other way around; incorporating a radical shift to an understanding of the organization as a community, not a set of structures or resources.
Radical Shift 