The Power of a Simple Idea | Jody Hoffer Gittell | TEDxRochester

Today's organizations continue to be structured much like organizations were at the time of the Industrial Revolution. This structure informs our mental models and the way we approach each other and our work. Dr. Jody Hoffer Gittell's ground breaking research helps us understand why that may no longer serve us and how coordinating our work relationally matters. She argues that gaining awareness of and skill in such relational coordination may enable us to be more agile and perform the adaptive work of our time.
Jody Hoffer Gittell is a professor at Brandeis University's Heller School for Social Policy and Management. She founded and leads the Relational Coordination Research Collaborative (RCRC), whose mission is to foster widespread development and adoption of relational coordination theory, evidence, and tools. Gittell also co-founded Relational Coordination Analytics Inc., which offers measurement, evaluation, and visualization of relational coordination networks to organizations. She received her PhD from the MIT Sloan School of Management, and taught at the Harvard Business School before joining the faculty at Brandeis. She serves on the board of the Endowment for Health, and the Academy of Management Review.
Gittell has developed a theory of relational coordination, proposing that highly interdependent work is most effectively coordinated through relationships of shared goals, shared knowledge, and mutual respect, and supported by frequent, timely, accurate, and problem-solving communication. Research shows that relational coordination is associated with a wide range of positive performance outcomes, and that organizations support or undermine it through the design of their work systems. This work began in the airline industry and is now practiced and studied in a variety of industries including healthcare, education, and banking, and in many countries including the United States, Denmark, Canada, Scotland, and Pakistan.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at ted.com/tedx