Presented by Xian Kalana Wijesekara, this presentation focuses on Social Physics, which revolves around people, their interactions and their behaviours. It lets us understand the connections between people and how they behave, and this goes hand in hand with with data analysis and big data as well.
16. Machan, that scene Pete Deemer told
about story points is totally true
I know! It happened to us in last sprint!
Decision Making
A
B
17. Engagement
> Anura sends email to organise a uni session
> Anura starts a skype chat to organize a uni session
> Anura stops by your desk to organize a uni session
19. #1 #2
Thingstodo
Understand more
social physics in
99XT environment
Find ways to influence
social patterns, various
interactions, behaviours
and experiences
Good morning everyone. What you see in the picture is what is called Colosseum in Rome. That’s where you know, all the gladiators fought. It was a display of power. It’s also one of the greatest engineering constructions to this date. The great emperor watched it and invited all classes of people. 80,000 spectators. When historians wonder why they did it, easiest way to explain is social science. Today, we’re going to talk about Social Physics in a corporate environment and I hope for most of you this will be a new page in social science.
Social + Physics
Big data and analytics. Mathematics and statistics
Simple examples from 99x life
Two things to look at
Social physics is social and physics put together. So in physics we talk about objects and forces that we put on them n so on.
In social physics we mainly focus about people, and their interactions and their behaviours. Social physics let us understand cool connections between people and how they behave.
Social physics goes hand in hand with with data analysis and big data as well. It it goes into analysing behaviour data into them using mathematical and statistical frameworks.
But whoa…whoa… im not going to do any of that today. Im not even going to talk about theories of social physics. All Im gonna do is, talk about simple examples, talk to you about things we do as xians and try to understand them in a social physics point of view.
Well at the end if you agree with me, and if you don’t start throwing things at me… i’ll finish my talk with two things we can do to help us improve our corporate environment.
What will social physics promise you.
If these applicable to you. Lets jump in.
Before we start, we need to understand one small concept called Social Fabric.
what is in the picture is a rally organised by the Gandhi world foundation in India.
So all those kids are dressed up as gandhi’s. They look all same. They follow gandhi’s thinking.
But if you take real life, we are surrounded by different kind of people. they are different. they work in different ways. and because we’re social creatures… people around us and what they do have a huge influence on us. so in simple words… social fabric is people around you and what they do.
Let me give you an example. whats cool to do. attitudes. what music. what apps to download.
this audience is most smart, intelligent but its still true. so lets see how social physics let us understand is how these various things affect us.
Incentive. How it was born?
Incentives were tangible things. Potatos, Gold, Money, Biscuits.
Individual.
Incentives is manuplilation.
Against social fabric.
Incentives. Incentives is a rational that comes from very early days… 1700s. This is when people realised wow I can work for some one. So both people gets an advantage.
why we give people incentives? We want to them behave in favourable manner.
because incentive given at early stages are usually tangible things people started to give individual incentives.
most of the times incentives add forces against social fabric. incentives wants you to do things that you wont naturally do with people around you or what happens around u.
so the problem is the moment incentives stop, behaviours revert back to their natural flow.
Are incentives bad?
Incentives are great in corporate environment. And very effective too. It’s just that we should use them on social interactions than directly on individual.
Let me give you a very crude example would be, if I give you 1500 each quarter to motivate you for something, what do you feel? But do you realise that is the same amount of money that goes into your team outings and the effect that creates. Theres a tremendous different. And its great a win - win situation too.
The effect that creates in a team outing last so much longer.
So what social physics tell you about incentives is, when you do the incentives that change the social fabric, those incentives tend to stick around. Why? because what it creates is kind of social pressure with things like belonging, team sprint, shared interests, good relationships and so on.
Next we’re gonna talk about how bonds or ties work.
If we take that picture and we think those people are us…. we have different connections to different people.
We connect because we work in the same project team, or shared same rooms at the annual trip and so on.
Let me talk about an example. When we talked about starting this business conference, I was a little scared about what will come from our social fabric. Whether this will work out. But then I reached Shenika, Amila as speakers because we have worked in a common team of Sports committee 2012 and I have a very good connection with them. I had more trust, more influencing power with them so I was able to fight against resistance from the social fabric.
Social physics says, stronger ties are created based on common interests, common opportunities and common circumstances.
And stronger the tie between two people or as a group, it makes it easier to avoid disturbances from the social fabric. So we should look at creating as much as healthy connection based on common things. movie club, initiatives, cat lovers, 99x justin beiber fan group… all these are good.
Next we’re gonna talk about how bonds or ties work.
If we take that picture and we think those people are us…. we have different connections to different people.
We connect because we work in the same project team, or shared same rooms at the annual trip and so on.
Let me talk about an example. When we talked about starting this business conference, I was a little scared about what will come from our social fabric. Whether this will work out. But then I reached Shenika, Amila as speakers because we have worked in a common team of Sports committee 2012 and I have a very good connection with them. I had more trust, more influencing power with them so I was able to fight against resistance from the social fabric.
Social physics says, stronger ties are created based on common interests, common opportunities and common circumstances.
And stronger the tie between two people or as a group, it makes it easier to avoid disturbances from the social fabric. So we should look at creating as much as healthy connection based on common things. movie club, initiatives, cat lovers, 99x justin beiber fan group… all these are good.
Next we’re gonna talk about how bonds or ties work.
If we take that picture and we think those people are us…. we have different connections to different people.
We connect because we work in the same project team, or shared same rooms at the annual trip and so on.
Let me talk about an example. When we talked about starting this business conference, I was a little scared about what will come from our social fabric. Whether this will work out. But then I reached Shenika, Amila as speakers because we have worked in a common team of Sports committee 2012 and I have a very good connection with them. I had more trust, more influencing power with them so I was able to fight against resistance from the social fabric.
Social physics says, stronger ties are created based on common interests, common opportunities and common circumstances.
And stronger the tie between two people or as a group, it makes it easier to avoid disturbances from the social fabric. So we should look at creating as much as healthy connection based on common things. movie club, initiatives, cat lovers, 99x justin beiber fan group… all these are good.
Bubbles.
Quite often in social behaviour there are bubbles. If you remember dotcom bubble between 1997 and 2000, it’s something like that I’m talking about. Bubbles happens because of influence. You get influenced by me. And he gets influenced by you. And I get influenced by him.. and again… you get influenced by me.
Our influencing goes in a cycle and whatever the ideas that is been shared go deeper and deeper.
So whats the big deal?
Well first of all we need to realise that bubbles and trends are two different things.
What identifies a bubble from a trend is, if you look at the rate of adaption, trends are more or less linear and bubbles looks like shape of a bubble. Well the bad nature of a bubble is that they mostly pop before it even completes the shape of a bubble. Bubbles are unsustainable and especially in corporate environments, they’re often destructive. Bubbles are often motivated by overrated ideas. So basically we have to watch out for them.
Examples. Umm.. for us a bubble can be what javascript framework to use next or what appears to be the next cool thing to do at office.
Social physics, not only let us understand bubbles, it also shows us, how we can take control of bubbles. What we do is, again, instead of trying to change people or ideas, we change interactions. (add abc and animation)(add 4th bubble to slide)
Bubbles.
Quite often in social behaviour there are bubbles. If you remember dotcom bubble between 1997 and 2000, it’s something like that I’m talking about. Bubbles happens because of influence. You get influenced by me. And he gets influenced by you. And I get influenced by him.. and again… you get influenced by me.
Our influencing goes in a cycle and whatever the ideas that is been shared go deeper and deeper.
So whats the big deal?
Well first of all we need to realise that bubbles and trends are two different things.
What identifies a bubble from a trend is, if you look at the rate of adaption, trends are more or less linear and bubbles looks like shape of a bubble. Well the bad nature of a bubble is that they mostly pop before it even completes the shape of a bubble. Bubbles are unsustainable and especially in corporate environments, they’re often destructive. Bubbles are often motivated by overrated ideas. So basically we have to watch out for them.
Examples. Umm.. for us a bubble can be what javascript framework to use next or what appears to be the next cool thing to do at office.
Social physics, not only let us understand bubbles, it also shows us, how we can take control of bubbles. What we do is, again, instead of trying to change people or ideas, we change interactions. (add abc and animation)(add 4th bubble to slide)
Bubbles.
Quite often in social behaviour there are bubbles. If you remember dotcom bubble between 1997 and 2000, it’s something like that I’m talking about. Bubbles happens because of influence. You get influenced by me. And he gets influenced by you. And I get influenced by him.. and again… you get influenced by me.
Our influencing goes in a cycle and whatever the ideas that is been shared go deeper and deeper.
So whats the big deal?
Well first of all we need to realise that bubbles and trends are two different things.
What identifies a bubble from a trend is, if you look at the rate of adaption, trends are more or less linear and bubbles looks like shape of a bubble. Well the bad nature of a bubble is that they mostly pop before it even completes the shape of a bubble. Bubbles are unsustainable and especially in corporate environments, they’re often destructive. Bubbles are often motivated by overrated ideas. So basically we have to watch out for them.
Examples. Umm.. for us a bubble can be what javascript framework to use next or what appears to be the next cool thing to do at office.
Social physics, not only let us understand bubbles, it also shows us, how we can take control of bubbles. What we do is, again, instead of trying to change people or ideas, we change interactions. (add abc and animation)(add 4th bubble to slide)
More interesting stuff.
We can see how social physics works in decision making.
If you take how humans make decisions there are two types according to social science.
Systematic decision making. You take facts into consideration one by one, spend time to analyse and make a decision. Straight forward.
2. You make decisions based on your experience. You have experienced a similar situation. You see how things worked out… and based on that you make a decision. Scientists say 80% of decisions in our life time are made using this method. Because its fast, fairly easy and natural.
But social physics say there’s a catch. Are all those experience you use to make your decisions? Are they actually yours.
Think of examples: hybrid cars save you money. toyota cars are good on the long run. green tea is helps reduce weight.
It’s a funny thing if you think you have decide these based on your own experiences, but half of these experiences are shared experiences of your social fabric not actually yours. Sometimes you won’t even know what experiences are behind your decision.
So watch out when you decide. If your friend failed in creating a start up, don’t decide you’ll fail too.
Now we know our experiences is the base of decision making.
So we’ll figure out how social physics show us to learn good experiences.
You would go see new things, listen to something new, learn, come back and try to adapt. You go to trainings, workshops, techtalks etc. It’s all data you get.
But if you’d think about it, what makes it a more effective learning is all those chats that you have with your peers about what you heard. “Hey machan what pete deemer said about story points is really cool yeah?.” “i know right, it was happening us all this time." The very first instance you do that, it turns into a behaviour or an experience thats more natural to you. its no longer some data. its becomes a better learning through social interaction. If you think back the best things you learnt at any workshop or conference, chances are that those are the ones that you have talked.
Does that make sense? If you want to learn something make it a social learning or an experience.
Ok so if you want to learn something from this talk today, just go talk about it with your friends. :D
Engagement… if Anura wants to organise a university session he might drop a email. or he might start have a skype chat. or he might stop by your desk while passing by.
what do you think most effective?
Person is same. Message is same. Interaction is different.
Social science statistics 30% 40% effectiveness of any task executed depends on interactions irrespective of how you communicate in corporate env.
Here’s an interesting bit.
In the early days, even during those gladiators fought in colosseum in Rome… if there was a lightning people thought that’s an act of God.
If there was an earthquake people thought it was an act of God. If your crops go bad, its the wrath of god. It was because people could not understand what happens. Later in scientific discovery we understood what are the underlying concepts.
Well if you take things in corporate engagement, if an employee is not doing well for some reason we often hear… he’s not engaged. when a project team is not performing well we tell project team is not engaged. This word engagement has become a way to explain things that you don’t understand!
If you look at all the previous examples the key things were people and how they interact. So if you hear engagement is the god, social physics helps you understand how everything fits together and work. if you’re wondering how the strings are pulled. cog wheels are turned. the answer is social physics.
So at the begining of my presentation i told you i’ll tell you two things, if you agree with these concepts
1. Like the examples we discussed there will be plenty more scenarios where we can understand using social physics point of view. We will know what make things to do right and what makes things to do wrong.
2. We should find ways to influence our social patterns and various interactions, behaviours and experiences. In this case I heavily believe in creating platforms for people to engage more. If we have enough discipline even platforms like our initiative can be more adhoc. Our platforms has to be natural so people feel less resistance from the social fabric. And we should enhance our interactions so whatever the improvements we make gonna stay longer.