#ethan bernstein

Always on, always connected isn’t always better when it comes to solving problems at work. In fact, teams get better results when they collaborate only intermittently, according to recent research.

Insights on work collaboration highlight the study, How Intermittent Breaks in Interaction Improve Collective Intelligence (pdf), written by Ethan Bernstein, the Edward W. Conard Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School; Jesse Shore, assistant professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business; and David Lazer, professor at Northeastern University. Their results appear in the August 2018 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Many organizations have a bias toward solving sticky problems through collaboration, either in person or virtually. The more eyes on a problem, the theory goes, the better the solution. But is the persistent collaboration encouraged by today’s communication tools like Slack and Skype good or bad for finding the best answer?

“I DON’T WANT THERE TO BE ZERO COMMUNICATION, BUT I DO THINK THAT TRANSPARENCY AND COMMUNICATION DO HAVE DOWNSIDES"

A new before-and-after study led by a Harvard Business School professor might bolster the already strong case against the open office plan.

Unlike previous research, it uses empirical evidence rather self-reported data to show that airy, communal spaces do not a buzzing, collaborative environment make.

Ethan Bernstein, an associate professor of organizational behavior, built the research around a real-life renovation at the headquarters of an unnamed Fortune 500 company engaged in a “so-called war on walls.”  He had employees wear people analytics badges that track (but do not record) conversations through anonymized sensors, which gave the professor and his co-author data they could compare against changes in online communication. (To minimize the effects of outside factors, their research took snapshots of two three-week periods that fell at that same point in different business quarters, one before walls were banished, and one after.)

In two studies, the researchers found that conversations by email and instant messaging (IM) increased significantly after the office redesign, while productivity declined, and, for most people, face-to-face interaction decreased. Participants in the first study spent 72% less time interacting in person in the open space. Before the renovation, employees had met face to face for nearly 5.8 hours per person over three weeks. In the after picture, the same people held face-to-face conversations for only about 1.7 hours per person.

HBS Professor Ethan Bernstein (MBA 2002) on the benefits of pushing one's boundaries.