Organizational Analytics

This course will bring you to the cutting edge of how organizations are (re)-designed using analytics. You will learn about a variety of tools which allow you to (1) better understand understanding what is happening in an organization, (2) forecast what is likely to happen in the future, based on sophisticated extrapolation of past data, and (3) prototype (i.e., conduct organizational A/B tests) to determine which decisions are likely to be successful based on pilot tests. These tools make for a major departure from the mainstream approach to organization design, which relies extensively on copying 'best practices' from other companies, represents organizations as 'boxes and arrows' organization charts, and is often obsessed with incentive compensation and reporting as the key organizational/HR decisions. Instead, you will learn how to use analytics to find out what works specifically for your company (rather than what worked in others), develop detailed models of interactions among employees (rather than among boxes) to help them collaborate successfully, and think of organization design as a combination of factors which can all be better understood through analytics. The course's goals are to make you more knowledgeable about the analytical tools which can help you design an organization, to give you frameworks to ask the right questions to data scientists and evaluate their work, and to help you make decisions based on the results of analyses. This is a hands-on class: we will rely extensively on group exercises, in which you will be able to learn enough about analytical tools and programming to be able to collaborate with analysts and evaluate their work. Who should take this course? If you are likely to be involved in strategy execution, post-merger integration, re-organizations, or HR in either a direct or advisory role (regardless of how big or small your company is), this course will put you at the cutting edge of thinking and methodology in these areas. Some of the exercises will involve programming (in the Python language, specifically). However, you DO NOT need to know statistics (beyond that covered in core courses) or computer programming to take and benefit from this course. We will provide technical support and will design exercises in a way that you can focus your energies on mastering the concepts and thinking of solving business problems. The course won't turn you into data analysts, but it will help you manage them.