Networks, Complexity, and Relatedness

Networks, Complexity, and Relatedness
Inquiry and learning into social networks, organizational network analysis, and the relationships among people and systems in complex organizations and networks.

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Tuesday, February 21, 2006

ONA Jumpstart Series

Given all the interest in SNA lately, it seems like a good time to provide more education to people who'd like a bit more depth on the topic without investing in a training course. So, I've been working with colleagues Seth Earley, Bruce Hoppe, and Nat Welch to put together a free, 4-part teleseminar beginning March 16. This will run for four weeks. We'll cover the "what it is and why should you care" parts; the "how do you interpret the data from a survey;" some good case studies, including a talk by Kate Ehrlich, who is featured in the BusinessWeek article Bruce has already blogged about; and a "what's in the future."

For details, and to register, see the Seminar Page, Social Network Analysis (SNA) Jump Start Conference Call Series modeled after Seth's successful series on Taxonomy Development.)

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Sunday, February 19, 2006

Social Networking in the News

My colleague Kate Ehrlich alerted our network to upcoming articles in Business Week (online and print editions) about social network analysis: The Office Chart that Really Counts. It's a great article, with quotes from Kate and many of the folks who are working with Rob Cross at the Network Roundtable. (You may need to register, but the free registration option will get you to it.) It's been my privilege to work with some of these people. (On the right of this page, under "Recent Publications," see a link to a detailed case on the MGH project. The BusinessWeek writer, got a much better quote than I did.)

It is so good to see network analysis breaking through into the mainstream business media, even if it is not making the distinction between organizational network analysis (ONA) and social network analysis. For the purposes of publicity, it doesn't matter, but for the purposes of being clear about the focus of using network analysis (see, I even eschew both adjectives) in my consulting work, I like to use ONA. It's about providing a diagnosis of the connectivity of the personal networks inside and across enterprises to improve business performance through enhanced understanding of the current state.

Meanwhile, much is in the news about "social networking" as defined almost exclusively by the likes of MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and others. So can we anticipate that come people will equate social network analysis as an analysis of these web sites? (See recent MSNBC, BusinessWeek, and -- my favorite-- The Daily Show.])

Linguists, I hear from an NPR article, are very excited about the evolution of the language as IM shorthand (LOL, TTYL, BFN, et al) creeps into spoken English "TTYLGF" is my favorite (talk to you later, girl friend). Spoken or written, the language does evolve. This week it appears like SNA, 3 and ONA, 0. But the language of networking is coming into the language, and that is what is important.

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Thursday, February 09, 2006

The fish are gentlemen

Searching for some good ideas on mapping industry networks, Google popped a Jay Cross page at me from 2003 on Social Network Analysis. (A great time of discovery about SNA.) He reports on a talk by Mark Granovetter that he heard at the inaugural meeting of the Institute for Social Network Analysis of the Economy (ISNAE: is-nay):

We’re all involved in social networking every day. It’s like the character in Moliere’s Bourgeois Gentilhomme who is astounded to discover that he has been speaking in prose all his life.

This is of course, apropos of my earlier post about fish on the distinction of "network" as something that we are in all the time and over which we can gain some control by better understanding that we are, in fact, in the soup.

(The quote about does kind of remind me of the opening voice-over on Numb3rs, "We all use math everyday.")

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Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Design for Emergence

Mark Bonchek, founding voice of Gennova, has been using the concept of design for emergence in his work creating and managing senior business leader networks at Tapestry Networks. Since he used the phrase in a Gennova meeting recently, I've been finding myself applying it in my own thinking about networks. In particular, as I think about answers to the question, "how do I create a network?" or "what are the important things you need to think about in designing a network," I think, "design for emergence."

I googled the phrase and found 294 entries. The first led me to pages titled "Designing for Emergence," notes and articles by and about Michael McMaster. At the top of this page is a link to an interview of Michael McMaster by Bill Veltrop. Hm, a connection exists. (I met Bill Veltrop at one of Doug Engelbart's Bootstrap Seminars in the early 90s. We had some good conversations, and I haven't seen or heard from him since.) Wait, there's another one. This interview is on a set of pages from the Community Intelligence Labs founded by George Por whom I have not met but who is no doubt only 2 degrees away many many times.

The second set of entries were related to thinking about participatory design in a way that the interaction of the user with the system guides the design of the thing itself. See the oister available from the Umea Center for Interaction Technology, "Design for Emergence."

So the thought of design for emergence is not entirely unthought, but it has, I think, a new resonance as both the memes of networks and complexity have advanced more into the popular (business) thinking.

Here's what I am thinking about it in terms of creating and designing networks. Design for emergence is about understanding that no matter how carefully you spec, measure, cut, and draw, the thing will change. Design is critical, measure twice cut once if you must, choose your attractors carefully, but if any of the raw materials are in the shape of human beings, you need to give up ownership and control to that which emerges.

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Friday, February 03, 2006

Everything is Marketing

A recent post by Ross Dawson gave a link to a great article by David Maister, called "Marketing is a Conversation." Of course my ears always perk up when I hear the word conversation in a business context. Work is conversation. Life is conversation and (of course) marketing is conversation. The article, co-authored by Lois Kelly summarize the importance of shifting the notion of communications in marketing toward genuine conversation, speaking and listening in a way that builds relatedness. The article includes some guidelines for creating and conducting effective conversations that hearken back to solid dinner-party conversation and story telling.

My partner, who has been in marketing for many years, looked over my shoulder for a moment while I was reading and said, "everything is marketing." This "homely phrase" (often phrased around our home) is of course reference to Regis McKenna's insights published in the early 90s (the book, Relationship Marketing, and the HBR article Marketing is Everything."

Everything is marketing and marketing is everything. My inquiry for this year is about making networks (in saltwater or fresh) distinct and to explore how to express that networks are everything and that everything is a network and that links are conversations.

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patti anklam. How to make networks work.

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