Organizations work by connections. These include the prescribed connections of the hierarchy, formal business processes, assigned teams — the structures put in place by management. Other organizational structures are emergent — they are neither designed, nor engineered. These include advice, expertise, support, mentoring and leadership relationships that emerge during the course of business. Employees form these connections to get their job done — especially when their formal work flow is either broken, blocked, or behind schedule.
It is often what happens in the white space on the organization chart that is key to effective organizations. It is the white space where adaption and learning happens, it is in the white space where much of the key knowledge exchanges and information flows happen in modern organizations. To understand your organization, and how to help it, you need to see all of the connections it needs to operate.
Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) is a way to x-ray your organization and see all of the connections in play. ONA allows you to both map and measure your organization’s connections. Any journey should begin with an accurate map of where you are, and the surrounding area. ONA is one of the new people analytics methods used in successful organizations today.
What happens when we x-ray an organization and see how it is structured -- how it really works? We will x-ray an IT management team at a large U.S. energy company. We normally view our organizations as hierarchies, or pyramids, with the top executive at the top of the structure. Figure 1 is a hierarchical view of the top 3 levels of the I/T department are shown. In this project, the CIO was interested in how his management team was working together after several mergers. He was afraid that most managers were stuck in their old silos — the clique of colleagues from their pre-merger employer.
 |
| Figure 1 - Hierarchy
People are represented by nodes, the color of the nodes represent their level in the organization, and the black lines designate reporting relationships. The larger magenta-colored node is the CIO, the green nodes are the I/T Directors and the blue nodes are the I/T managers. No lower levels in the organization were mapped for this analysis. Names of people and departments have been hidden for privacy.
Most hierarchies are viewed as a pyramidal structure with the highest executive on top. Some have tried new views of hierarchies, such as tilting them on their side, or showing them upside down to support their new theories of management. These views have not caught on. A better alternative to viewing a hierarchy as a pyramid, is to view it as a network! Mathematicians label hierarchical networks as trees. The tree view is shown in Figure 1. We can move our point of observation, without changing the organizational structure, and see our I/T organization as a Hub-and-Spoke network in Figure 2.
|
 |
| Figure 2 - Hub and Spoke |
Both views above show the exact same organization with the exact same links between nodes — we have just moved our point of observation! Now the CIO is at the center of Figure 2 instead of at the top of Figure 1. The black lines still show reporting relationships, and the node colors reveal organization level, as before. We have added gold frames around each department in Figure 2, but otherwise Figure 1 and Figure 2 show the exact same organization! We now realize that a Hierarchy and a Hub-and-Spoke network are the exact same thing — just viewed from a different angle.
View a hierarchy as a network, not a pyramid!
X-rays are usually good for revealing the bones and hard tissue inside the human body. Our skeleton and cartilage are like the rigid formal structure of the organization — the prescribed network of who works where, and who reports to whom. Our bodies have other important membranes and systems and so do organizations! Here is where ONA really shines — it not only works as an X-Ray, but also as an MRI. Like an MRI, ONA reveals the soft, emergent, action membranes that support how things really work in an organization. Other key exchanges, relationships, and flows inside organizations include:
- Work Flow/Collaboration
- Idea Flow/Innovation
- Knowledge Exchange/Learning
- Advice-seeking/Expertise
- Mentoring/Support
- Voice of the Customer/Feedback
- Friendship/Social Nets
- Culture/Strategy/Vision
 |
| Figure 3 - Wirearchy |
The gray lines, added to our Hub-and-Spoke view of the organization reveal the actual working relationships between the management staff in the I/T department. The gray links show the strong work ties between a pair of managers. These work relationships have emerged over time as the organization went about it's business. The CIO was very happy to see the crisscrossing work ties between the various departments. He was afraid his organization was stuck in silos, created by the many mergers his company had gone through. He was glad to see that the managers from acquired companies A, B, and C were now working together well.
We see that the hierarchy is just another network in an organization -- the networks all work together for the organization to execute its goals. This combination of prescribed and emergent networks may be called a Wirearchy — a principal of organizing originated by Jon Husband.
Finally, if we want to look at just the soft tissue inside an organization, we can remove the prescribed network [hierarchy] and look at just the emergent networks. The InFloPro software re-arranges the organization based on the actual links between people and we see an "MRI" of the emergent organization in Figure 4.
 |
| Figure 4 - Emergent Organization |
The organization view above is a layout based on actual work connections -- people that work together, and work with common others, show up nearby each other on the map. This allows us to see clusters, core members, and outliers. With a hierarchy/pyramid we talk about Top and Bottom. In a network we talk about Core and Periphery — center and edges. These structural locations are similar, yet different — one is assigned, and the other is earned. Your location in the hierarchy is based on you job title. Your network location is based on your Capabilities, Connections, and Communication [C3] — irrespective of your job title.
Another benefit of ONA is that it not only draws maps of the organization, but measures them also! Key network locations are revealed by network measures. The right side of the InFloPro screenshot in Figure 4 shows the individual Betweenness measures for the employees in the network. The Betweenness measure reveals the brokers and connectors within the organization. ONA metrics allow us to find key employees and groups in the organization:
- Brokers/Connectors
- Bottlenecks
- Isolates/Loners
- Bridges/Boundary Spanners
- Leaders
- Go-To People/Experts/Advisors
- Mentors
- Innovators
- Communities of Practice/Interest/Support
Organizations such as IBM, Rubbermaid, Boeing, Northrup Grumman, Merck, Alcatel-Lucent, Center for Disease Control and others have been x-raying since the 1990s. ONA network maps and metrics have helped their management teams succeed with complex projects and processes. Making sense of complex work, helps manage complex work — you cannot manage what you cannot see! Would you like to see inside your organization?
You cannot manage what you cannot see!Further on in this book, there is a chapter co-authored with Jon Husband that explores why and how ONA and Complexity theory and practices can be very useful with respect to the re-invention and rejuvenation of Human Resources as a strategic actor in developing the adaptability and effectiveness of networked organizations.
We use a network diagram for our organization. It's especially helpful psychologically - our culture is very collaborative and egalitarian, and it's a better way to visualize our relationships.
ReplyDelete