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.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

21st Century Organization

Jenny Ambrozek, who with colleagues Victoria Alexrod and Suzanne Roff, writes about trends and thought leaders for 21st century organization blogged this week about a Harvard Business Review survey that is open to anyone. The survey -- a project collaboration between Gary Hamel and Thomas A. Stewart -- asks for free form answers to two questions:

Twenty years into the future, what one characteristic — principle, process, practice, or structural feature — of the late twentieth-century industrial organization will appear to be the most antiquated or anachronistic?
Looking out a generation or two, what feature or characteristic — principle, process, practice, or structural feature — of leading-edge organizations will be most different from what we observe today?

The reward for answering the questions is to receive a copy of all the responses. What could be more interesting?

Jenny is one of my strongest weak ties, if that can be said. We don't see each other much since our earlier collaboration in Gennova that led to Net Work, but she always sends me signals about great events and happenings, like the launch of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence last week.

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Sunday, October 15, 2006

Philadelphia knows who its Connectors are

I just read a newswire this morning about a wonderful project in Philadelphia, initiated by LEADERSHIP Philadelphia to identify the top Connectors in the city's business, cultural, private and public sectors. They brought in Karen Stephenson to guide the project. It's a wonderful net work story (which I have found just too late to get into the book!). The purpose of the project was to:

Jump start a positive conversation about good leadership in greater Philadelphia
Identify area leaders across sectors who exemplify quality leadership
Interview these leaders in order to study what makes them successful
Develop a curriculum based on the leaders’ competencies
Launch the curriculum in Philadelphia-area school systems
Convene and connect these leaders

The underlying principle on which the project was founded: "Building connections strengthens the economy." (It all actually started when Liz Dow, president of LEADERSHIP Philadelphia read Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat and got thinking about finding the connectors in a city.)

One interesting aspect of this project is that it mirrors the research into the networks of top performers. Rob Cross, Tom Davenport, and Susan Cantrell first reported on this research thread in the MIT Sloan Management Review article, The Social Side of Performance. The goal in that work -- which is net work -- is to build the capabilities and competencies that enable people to create and sustain healthy networks, which we know and understand to be a requirement for health (personal, organizational, civic, and global).

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Friday, October 06, 2006

Sensemaking and Selection of Cooperation Tools

The October 2006 Harvard Business Review has an article by Clayton M. Christensen, Matt Marx and HOward H.Stevenson on "The Tools for Cooperation and Change." From the title alone, I thought perhaps something interesting on collaboration tools, but from the reading I found something much more compelling. It provides a framework for making sense of the current context of an organization before selecting specific management tools to approach change. It's about seeing patterns and then acting on the patterns, not unlike the way that we CognitiveEdge (previously Cynefin)practitioners contextualize a situation before determine the appropriate tools for action.

The cooperation and change framework consists of two axes:

On the vertical, the extent to which people agree on what they want
On the horizontal, the extent to which people agree on cause and effect

Hence, the dreaded lower left quadrant is that in which there is no consensus about cause and effect nor any agree about what people actually want to have happen. This, in short, is the chaos domain and positioned similarly to that domain in the CognitiveEdge framework. Tools for this quadrant are "power tools": take action! Coercion, threats, and fiat show up here.

The lower-right quadrant, on the other hand, consists of the "management tools," with such things as measurement systems, training, SOPs, and so on. The upper left is the domain for "leadership tools, and the upper right contains "culture tools," including rituals, tradition, folklore and democracy.

The point, of course, is that there isn't any right way to deal with change, but that it's important to have a sensemaking tool precede the selection of a specific tool to create change and cooperation. Whatever helps us see patterns that guide toward appropriate action in the complex world of networks and relationships.

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Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Chicago Masterclass in December

The Ark Group has just posted an announcement of the 1-day SNA Masterclass that I'll be delivering in Chicago on December 5.

Having a whole day to transfer knowledge and create a conversation with people who see the possibilities for SNA in their own organizations is a real treat. Bruce Hoppe and I are squeezing as much as we can into a 1/2 day workshop and a 1-hour session at KMWorld.

Meanwhile, Net Work is almost done.

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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