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.

Saturday, April 29, 2006

Network Weaving

Valdis Krebs, June Holley, and Jack Ricchiuto have begun to blog their work in economic community development at Network Weaving. Early posts from January 2006 tell how they met and began working together, joined by common interests in networks and using network concepts and mapping practices to create and sustain economic communities.

The ACEnet story, which I consider one of the great inspiring stories of networks, was originally written by Valdis and June in 2002. It's been updated to include some models that Jack has developed including the Introduction Pyramid. This is as fine a model as I've seen about that shows how the level of commitment in an introduction impacts the outcome. At the bottom of the pyramid is telling A "you should talk to B," and at the top is working with A and B to start a collaboration and coaching them through the starting phases of it. The greater the commitment, the more trust is built, the more the talent of each party is truly engaged and yes, the more work is required. Net work. Like I said.

I really look forward to more of the rich stories that Valdis, June, and Jack will be telling as they engage in committed introductions and coaching network weavers.

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Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Teaching Net Work in Executive Ed

One of our SNA JumpStart telecalls spotlighted Kate Ehrlich (IBM) and Don Ronchi, formerly of Raytheon and now with the University of Chicago. Working with Ron Burt, Don developed and managed a Business Leadership Program (BLP) at Raytheon. The goal was to introduce senior managers to the network theory of social capital, its implications in a business environment, and provide a practicum in which managers could apply theory and methods in their work. Their paper describing the program and its outcomes is called Teaching Executives to See Social Capital: Results from a Field Experiment.

We network canaries have been peeping about the need for managers to be trained to understand and leverage networks, and I'm thrilled to see both the amazing course (materials are available on Ron Burt's teaching and research pages.

The course includes many case studies, which will take me weeks to devour. But you should devour this: the result of their analysis of the BLP itself is a riveting read (I quote from their summary):

executives educated in the network structure of social capital show performance improvement relative to a control group of untrained, but otherwise equally able peers: Program graduates are 36% to 42% more likely to receive top performance evaluations, 43% to 72% more likely to be promoted (an effect that builds in the two years following the program), and 42% to 74% more likely to be retained by the Company. Active participation matters. The subsequent careers of executives who were quiet spectators in the program cannot be distinguished from the careers of people in the control group, peers who never attended the program.

This session prompted me to go back and pick up Brokerage and Closure, which I had begun some time earlier, and fallen off a bit.

My newest learning from both the session and the book is the concept of the network constraint, and that is a concentration measure tha varies from 0 to 100 as a persons' time and energy become concentrated in a single contact. So, the more time you spend with a small, closed group, the higher the constraint. Burt uses two symbols to illustrate constraint ranging from 0 to 100.

(I have to go figure out how to make the little graphic work. Back later.)

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Sunday, April 02, 2006

Net Work in Practice

The Yahoo! group, ONA-prac, that we launched for the JumpStart Series (one session left!) has 98 members. We are beginning this as a classic community of practice, with (for now) a core team of four members and a commitment to being responsive to postings, keeping the conversation going, and collecting learnings as we go. This will transition at some point to another network form, but we're not sure yet what that will be.

As ONA work is taken up by more and more organizational and KM practitioners, I am starting to find my focus, and that is in how understanding the essential structure of a network -- its patterns -- can help leaders decide how to manage it or how to transition it to another form. I'm calling this "Net Work," with a central proposition that having the distinction of network structure leads to better performance of organizational networks, social and economic action networks, and client/partner relationships.

There are hints everywhere. I just came across an interview with Rob Cross in CSC World. Looking at a basic core/periphery pattern, and analyzing the roles of leaders, he says, "In healthy organizations, as people rise in the hierarchy, they move out to the edge of a network, not the center. Formally or informally, they do things that decrease other people’s reliance on them."

This is a great principle for Net Work, and the work ahead for ONA-prac.

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patti anklam. How to make networks work.

Find me person-to-person !

KMWorld 2008 September 23-25, San Jose, CA. I'll be doing a session on Net Work and moderating a day with KM thought leaders.

links: network analysis

My ONA Page

Rob Cross
Bruce Hoppe
Valdis Krebs
INSNA
ONA-prac. The online community for learners and practitioners in the emerging field of Organizational Network Analysis.

links: blogroll

21st Century Organization
Anecdote
Bill Ives
Dave Snowden
David Gurteen
Denham Grey
Jack Vinson
Patrick Lambe
Ross Dawson