Looking for a notable business read? The Decoded Company: Know Your People Better Than You Know Your Customers (Portfolio/Penguin, February 25, 2014) reveals how data is revolutionizing the workforce at some of the world’s most forward-thinking companies. The first book on big data in the workplace, it uncovers a transformational new (and long overdue) business management approach that leverages data like never before – and couldn’t come at a better time. Data-driven companies like Amazon and Netflix have used behavioural analytics for years to decode their customers to personalize the user experience. Now, this concept is moved to the workplace and a growing number of companies have started to decode the data trail that follows employees on their projects. In short, The Decoded Company examines the outcome when an organization is as internally connected as its customers are. The objective is to personalize each employee’s experience, increase emotional engagement, speed up mastery of new skills, and maximize an entire team’s potential.
In every aspect of our personal lives, intelligent algorithms constantly consume data and learn our preferences to customize our experience to them. Yet in the workplace, most of us are subjected to (and have become accustomed to) typical, one-size-fits-all policies, processes and procedures that lead to frustrations and stifle productivity and innovation. The Decoded philosophy deviates from these dated business management approaches and offers insight to how managers of any size of organization can personalize each employee’s experience, rather than treating people as interchangeable resources. The promised result is increased agility and speed, evidenced-based decision-making, decreased bureaucracy, and the ability to predict problems before they occur.
Decoded is no theoretical concept; rather, it’s a proven business model that Toronto’s young entrepreneurial powerhouse Leerom Segal and his co-authors, Aaron Goldstein, Jay Goldman, and Rahaf Harfoush, have been developing for over 16 years. Under Segal’s leadership, Klick Health has grown into the world’s largest independent digital health agency, also known as the company that every Toronto young professional (YP) in advertising wants to work at. Klick is a $100-million, data-driven, employee-centric company that is known for its unmatched corporate culture (employees were recently greeted with Xboxes). The company has achieved a minimum of 30 per cent growth per year, and won over 80 awards in 2013 alone for its management, culture, and work. The book also features case studies on Google, Whole Foods, Starbucks, UPS, and other companies that are already using Decoded analytics to reverse flagging sales, improve performance, and prevent the repetition of mistakes. It offers examples of companies that did it right, as well as those who did it wrong and misused employee data. To protect employee privacy, the authors have included guidelines that ensure data is managed and collected in a safe, trusted, and ethical way. It is complete with the self-assessment scorecards, examples from the authors’ own experiences at Klick, and experiments to help get start “decoding” your own organization.
So far, the response since its launch last week has been incredibly positive. It has quickly become a New York Times and USA Today bestseller and praised by people like futurist and fellow best-selling author Don Tapscott (Paradigm Shift, The Digital Economy, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything). “Next generation management calls for next generation tools. The Decoded Company shows you how to build truly 21st-century operating systems that use data to empower talent, creating not just efficiencies but true capability across your entire business,” says Tapscott.
Get your hands on the book yourself here.
#LYNL | (Live Your Notable Life)
Cover image from: Klick.com
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