Gestur Palmason - the future of the organisations, connectivity and the predictive power of network analysis
Gestur Palmason is a coach working at Complete Coherence. Amit speaks to Gestur both around meaningful work and his journey into the craft of coaching and then turn their attention to the tool Complete Coherence has developed called Organisational Network Analysis. We speak of connection - the heart of the organisation, how agility and decision making is closely related, the relationship between heart rate variability and performance and how one can, through asking 9 simple questions and running them through some pretty sophisticated analytics can predict which employees are at risk of quitting and who’s thriving. This is a really interesting conversation.
The 9 questions of the Organisational network analysis
The Organisational Network Analysis (ONA) asks 3 questions in 3 different domains so in total 9 questions in 3 buckets:
Bucket 1 - The functional network: Name the people you typically collaborate with, name the people you connect with to get the job done, name the people that you can go to in order to secure faster progress (agility for short)
Bucket 2 - Cultural network: Name the people you feel energised by, name the people you go to for support and name the people you feel open and honest with (trust for short)
Bucket 3 - Leadership network: Name the people you look to for guidance, name the people that stretch your thinking, name the people that actively support your development.
All of these are relevant in the work place in different ways. Gestur is pointing to the cultural being by far the most important in terms of worker satisfaction and retainment of workforce. Their studies show that most currently successful companies score high in bucket 1 and that this might be a sign of trouble in the longer run.
What are the metrics for high employee retainment? When do people stay? When they feel energised by their work, when they feel like they belong and when they are engaged in what is meaningful to them.
What does the future of organisations look like?
The vision of the future of the organisation beyond the hierarchal organisation that took us to the initial part of the industrial revolution. This turned into the matrix organisation, later augmented by the in-official project organisation which takes us basically up to today. Complete sees a clear trend. The future of the organisation may operate in 3 layers in order to prioritise agility in a complex world: A strategic layer at the top - An expert layer at the base and a connective / polymath layer in the middle that is synergising and synthesizing the knowledge.
And there is a lot more thought provoking stuff in this episode. Enjoy!
Links and further reading
Ted talk of Dr Alan Watkins: Why you feel what you feel
Interoception: The very basic basics of interoception
Andrew Huberman Podcast on Meditation
Gestur Palmason (LinkedIn)