The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain

by Annie Murphy Paul

One study found, for example, that a 1 percent reduction in efficiency, allowing time for “unstructured employee interaction,” produces a threefold increase in group performance over the long term. During such interaction, it may seem as though employees are simply exchanging gossip. “But what is gossip?” asks Sandy Pentland, a computational scientist and MIT professor who has conducted many studies demonstrating the benefits of workplace interaction. “Gossip is stories about what happened and what you did” in response. He adds: “If you think about what needs to happen for a healthy organization, people need to know the rules of the road. They need to know how things are done. Which means they have to hear the stories.”