Cambridge Business Association
The Decoded Company
Book

The Decoded Company

Know Your Talent Better Than You Know Your Customers

Leerom Segal, Aaron Goldstein, Jay Goldman and Rahaf Harfoush
Portfolio, 2014
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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

Contemporary shopping means giving up personal data. Some organizations gather similar data about their staff members. Every email, phone call, e-calendar entry and pass card swipe in the workplace forms a detailed profile of each employee. With this data, firms can tailor training, coaching and assignments to individual workers. Leerom Segal and Aaron Goldstein – leaders of Canada’s Klick Health – and writers Jay Goldman and Rahaf Harfoush explain that knowing your workforce intimately is as important as knowing your customers. Klick uses artificial intelligence that analyzes data and gives advice on training, hiring and firing for the benefit of companies and their workers. Whether you agree with this approach to talent management or think it could portend an invasion of privacy, getAbstract recommends the authors’ findings and fascinating stories to CEOs, CIOs, HR and IT managers, and anyone concerned about privacy issues.

Summary

Outdated Management Practices

Many organizations manage employees today the way companies managed workers a century ago. In the industrial era, workers were interchangeable. Rigid hierarchies and a strict command-and-control system characterized assembly-line management. Today, the workforce has changed – from an industrial, factory-based, blue-collar majority to a knowledge-based, white-collar majority. Management techniques and structures have not kept pace with the economy and workforce. Many firms suffer employee disengagement and lackluster performance.

Today’s typical employees enter a stifling workplace, far removed from the world of unlimited personal choice they take for granted as consumers. Uninspiring management and unfriendly technology rob workers of engagement and productivity. The new era of big data and “predictive analytics” promises to change this.

“Ambient Data”

Until recently, marketers segmented consumers by zip code to target high-income households. Today, consumer behavior tells marketers far more. When you shop online, you experience big data and predictive analytics as a consumer. Technology enables personalization, such as individual...

About the Authors

Leerom Segal, Aaron Goldstein and Jay Goldman lead Klick Health as CEO, COO and vice president of technology, respectively. Rahaf Harfoush is an author, technology consultant and entrepreneur.

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    M. B. 9 years ago
    This seems like a re-boiled summary of a consulting report. nothing new here.
  • Avatar
    P. L. 9 years ago
    Who vote this book for 9?
  • Avatar
    C. S. 9 years ago
    summary is too long