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Employee Collaboration: Organization Network Analysis

Organization Network Analysis (ONA) is a powerful x-ray into how work really gets done. If you thought employees followed the lines and dashes of the org chart to make it happen, you will be surprised. Before you execute the next big change effort, be sure you understand the hidden network of effective interactions. 

 

I bring clarity to a complex topic. I combine attitudes, performance, and connections to bring the employee network to life. I translate the best of academia to the practical world.

Approach

The battle cry has sounded. A network approach to talent management and leadership development, and collaboration has been proven to lend competitive advantage. Leaders now need to not just understand, but actively leverage the power of corporate networks.

 

Organization Network Analysis drives predictive analytics to a completely new level. No longer are we just clever counting, we are targeting efforts with laser focus. If you could do any of the following, the level of impact of interventions would increase exponentially. What if you could:

 

  • Identify key influencers for a change program

  • Pinpoint roles that need to be redesigned

  • Improve collaboration in strategically important areas 

  • Determine drivers of team or unit performance

  • Find and nurture high potential leaders

  • Understand how integrated new businesses are after a merger

  • Layout the new office plan bringing groups together to improve innovation

 

You may have heard about ONA/SNA but didn't know how to get it off the ground. This diagnostic approach is highly flexible - start small or go for the big bang. It yields a very rich set of results that can be applied to so many areas that concern HR practitioners. 

 

At McKinsey, I worked on 75 ONA projects both for clients and internal functions - for groups as small as the ExCom to whole organizations of tens of thousands across all industries and regions. I innovated our approach to analysis to: 

 

  • Shed light on information flows, negative mindsets, and hidden but central people

  • Identify silos across units, functions, and geographies

  • Expose missing interactions needed to serve customers and innovate

  • Discover employees with high impact and the most valuable interactions

  • Feed insights into talent strategies by illuminating  pockets of strength to be replicated more widely

 

The next generation of business success depends on building strong enterprise networks and incorporating the network mindset into leadership approaches.

 

"Effective network leaders operate differently and rely on a set of important competencies not easily substituted or compensated for. To fuel collaboration and knowledge sharing across the organization, network leaders must be effective at indirect leadership as well as traditional direct leadership. They need to be as good, if not better, at influencing how stakeholders work together as they are at using formal authority to drive activity."

 

The Rise of the Network Leader

Reframing Leadership in the New Work Environment

Corporate Executive Board, Executive Guidance for 2014

Using Organization Network Analysis to Accelerate Innovation

This is an overview I wrote of how an ONA diagnostic can bring focus to innovation efforts. It includes a sample survey, workplan, and illustrative reports.

Finding influencers matters for successful change & innovation

In this Ted talk, CEO Zach Johnson of Syndio Social makes a strong case for network analytics in the search for key influencers to make change stick.

ONA proves effective in addressing strategic business issues

Innovation

Innovation

Managers most sought for innovation advice held negative attitudes toward innovation. They created a bottleneck in the flow of ideas because they were unable to balance the demands of day-to-day priorities with shepherding new ideas through a vague process. – Media and entertainment

Teams

Teams

Client impact measures were 45% higher in teams with four key characteristics: brokers connected to other teams; one strong executional manager on the team; comprising a mix of new and old members; and connected to other high-performing teams – thus ensuring the introduction of novelty and follow-through. – Telecom

Sales

Sales

Sales consultants were unaware that their efforts were focused too much on low-value clients thereby leaving revenue on the table by ignoring high-value clients. – Financial services

Performance

Performance

The ONA was helpful in realizing why we lacked nimbleness and quick turnaround times for proposals. Creating information conduits across business lines and regions helped us assemble teams more efficiently with needed skills, knowledge, and experience, enabling faster time to market. – Information technology consultancy

Knowledge

Knowledge

A high-performing BU had developed new approaches that increased productivity, but the siloed nature of the company stood in the way of sharing best practices - understanding how the company was siloed allowed them to develop ideas of how to increase connectivity to share ideas. - Industrial

Collaboration

Collaboration

Proximity matters – connections are strengthened in person; when the coffee machine was moved more centrally, information sharing increased. - Consumer

Mergers

Mergers

After a merger, I identified units that were not yet integrated into the fabric of the rest of the company, representing lost synergies. - Bank

Talent

Talent

High performers had more diverse networks across the organization – which proved to be an important element of their success. Replicating characteristics of their networks increased performance across the company. – Insurance

Companies using ONA

Professional Services

  • Accenture

  • Booz Allen Hamilton

  • Boston Consulting Group

  • CapGemini

  • Deloitte

  • Ernst & Young

  • Government of Alberta

  • Hill & Knowlton

  • Ketchum

  • KPMG

  • Maritz

  • McCann-Erickson

  • McKinsey & Company

  • Mercer

  • Monitor Group

  • PricewaterhouseCoopers

  • RAND Corp

  • UK & US Governments

Financial Services

  • Australian Securities Exchange

  • Abbey National (Santander)

  • AIG

  • American Express

  • Aviva

  • Bank of America

  • Bank of Montreal

  • Capital One

  • Cigna

  • Citibank

  • Fannie Mae

  • Goldman Sachs

  • IFC

  • Royal Bank of Scotland

  • TD Bank

  • T. Rowe Price

  • UBS

Knowledge Intensives

  • Babcock & Wilcox

  • Bristol-Myers Squibb

  • Cardinal Healthcare

  • Cisco

  • Eli Lilly

  • Fluor

  • Glaxo Smith Kline

  • Halliburton

  • Hewlett-Packard

  • IBM

  • Intel

  • Juniper Networks

  • Merck

  • Microsoft

  • Nokia

  • Novartis

  • Pfizer

  • Procter & Gamble

  • Thomson Reuters

  • Xerox

Industrials

  • 3M

  • Asea Brown Boveri 

  • BP 

  • Chevron Texaco

  • ConocoPhillips

  • Constellation

  • EnCana

  • Monsanto

  • Petrobas

  • Raytheon

  • Rio Tinto

  • Schlumberger

Influencers

Tapping the power of hidden influencers

McKinsey Quarterly, 2014, Leigh Weiss, Lili Duan

Companies need to develop strong change leaders who employees know and respect - in other words, people with informal influence. But there’s one problem: finding them. How can company leaders identify those people beforehand to better harness their energy, creativity, and goodwill - and thereby increase the odds of success?

 

Harnessing the power of informal employee networks

McKinsey Quarterly, 2007, Leigh Weiss, Eric Matson, L. Bryan

As we studied social and informal networks, we made a surprising discovery: how much information and knowledge flows through them and how little through official hierarchical and matrix structures. As we mapped the way employees actually exchange information and knowledge, we concluded that the formal structures of companies, as manifested in their organizational charts, don’t explain how most of their real day-to-day work gets done.

 

A Leader’s Network: How to Help Your Talent Invest in the Right Relationships at the Right Time

Center for Creative Leadership|2013 | Kristin Cullen, Phil Willburn

The ability to lead is directly affected by the networks a leader builds. Leaders achieve success – for themselves and their organizations – not only because of their own abilities, knowledge, and skills but also through their relationships with others. The networks leaders build affect how they share and receive new ideas. They provide opportunities – and place constraints on their actions. Networks allow leaders to locate resources and information outside their routine interactions. Connections can give leaders an edge.

 

The Hidden Power of Social Networks: Understanding How Work Really Gets Done in Organizations

Book, 2004 by Rob Cross and Andrew Parker

The Rise of the Network Leader: Reframing Leadership in the New Work Environment

CEB report, 2014 

There is a fundamental shift to a more fluid business environment, characterized by ubiquitous information and rapid technological advances, where employees’ work has become more collaborative, interdependent, and knowledge based. More work is now accomplished through employee networks, best described as collaborating webs of knowledge workers both internal and external to an organization.

 

The role of networks in organizational change

McKinsey Quarterly, 2007, Leigh Weiss, Rob Cross

The boxes and lines of formal organizational charts mask myriad employee relationships in networks that crisscross the borders of functions, hierarchies, and business units. These networks define the way work actually gets done in today’s increasingly collaborative, knowledge-intensive companies.

 

Brokerage and closure

Book, 2007 | Article, 2000

Academic Ron Burt has identified two types of activities that create value in employee networks: brokerage and closure. His ground breaking work provides us with an understanding of how collaboration happens.

  • Brokerage - This leads to innovation by building bridges and relationships between clusters. Brokers are in a position to see the differences between groups, to cross-pollinate ideas, and to develop the differences into new ideas and opportunities.

  • Closure - This leads to performance by building alignment, trust, reputation and community within the clusters. Trust builders are in a position to understand the deep connections that bond people together and give them common identity and purpose.

 

Rob Cross' Website Resources for Practitioners

Dr. Rob Cross, University of Virginia

 

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