Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Social capital in one easy lesson

The power of social network analysis for business is getting a lot of press these days (like this big BusinessWeek article). Without taking anything away from that, I want to put in a plug for the benefits of training people to see social capital more clearly, and appreciate how it affects their lives--all without necessarily doing any SNA mapping.

Here is the climactic slide of my social capital class, which helps my clients develop more targeted strategies for building their social networks:
For the second lesson, see the social network analysis jump start.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License and is copyrighted (c) 2006 by Connective Associates except where otherwise noted.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

The Office Chart That Really Counts (Business Week)

BusinessWeek has a great spread this week on social network analysis. In "The office chart that really counts," BW reports how SNA can help locate experts and help new leaders get up to speed faster. (See this recent post for additional insight on SNA and leadership.) BW reports on the growing ranks of big corporations using SNA, and also summarizes some of the potential disruptions caused by SNA (with tips on lessening them). The article includes this chart of when SNA is useful:
Accompanying the article is a nice interview with Kate Ehrlich, a colleague of mine whose recently contributed to this post on collaboration. In the interview ("IBM: Untangling office connections") Kate describes why SNA's time has come, echoing sentiments of SNA luminary David Krackhardt. Kate also describes the insights SNA provides into the three stages of innovation--butressing the argument that three is the only number that really counts in SNA.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License and is copyrighted (c) 2006 by Connective Associates except where otherwise noted.

Monday, February 20, 2006

SNA and opera plots (The Asterisks Tell the Story)

Yesterday's NY Times reported the use of network maps to summarize opera librettos in "The Asterisks Tell the Story" by James Oestreich. Below is "La Finta Giardiniera" as depicted in the concert program for Mozart Week, recently hosted in Salzburg, Austria:
File this picture under "network visualization," and when you're ready to dive deep see Manuel Lima's visualcomplexity.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License and is copyrighted (c) 2006 by Connective Associates except where otherwise noted.

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Free online network survey utility for Organizational Network Analysis

Back in December I gave my readers a Christmas present: this free spreadsheet utility for organizational network analysis. Quite a few people asked for an online version of this; so today for my birthday I am celebrating by giving away a new present: this free online network survey utility. If SurveyMonkey had existed in 1993, this is just the survey Krackhardt and Hansen would have used in researching their HBR article "Informal Networks."

To get the most from this online network survey, just follow the self-contained instructions to create your own personal copy. Then you can modify your copy of the survey as you wish and use it as you would any other SurveyMonkey survey.

I am providing the survey free of charge. SurveyMonkey is free or $20/month, depending on which features you want. Choose your favorite network mapping software (see the Connectedness right sidebar under "SNA Software") and you are ready to go.

If you are in a mood to shop around, I recommend you also see the special-purpose survey tools of Miguel Lobo at Duke's Fuqua School of Business and Rob Cross at UVA's Network Roundtable.

New to network mapping? Don't hesitate to email me with questions on how to get started.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License and is copyrighted (c) 2006 by Connective Associates except where otherwise noted.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Even with Web 2.0, we still occasionally need to meet face-to-face

[In case my irony did not come through in the subject line, let me preface this post with a comment that I am an online community skeptic. However, with my combined background in network optimization and community development, I love how technology can help me find better answers, faster, to my questions--including connecting me with the people I most want to talk to (where I really mean talk).]

A couple weeks ago (in this post) I mentioned the remarkable degree of impersonal trust being cultivated by Web 2.0 community engineers at eBay and Amazon. Kate Ehrlich approached me shortly thereafter with a wonderfully refined perspective on the limits of these impersonal social networks. Kate is a cognitive psychologist working at IBM's Collaborative User Experience Group, and so has a keen sense of the dynamics of modern business communities.

Kate suggested that some level of trust can be established and maintained online but that trust can erode if it is not supported by some face to face time. This is especially true
  • When you and I have a relationship rather than just a transaction
  • When our relationship needs to be sustained over time and is not just a single instance
  • When there is a dependency between us.
I like this list, especially how the last point distinguishes between online communities where members merely hang out and converse, vs. teams where members are really counting on each other.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License and is copyrighted (c) 2006 by Connective Associates except where otherwise noted.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Social capital of twenty-first-century leaders, by Daniel Brass and David Krackhardt

How do effective leaders manage relationships with their team members? Dan Brass and David Krackhardt put this question in context:
"Despite the acknowledgment that leaders spend most of their time interacting with others, the social capital of leaders is perhaps the most ignored, under-researched aspect of leadership."
They go on to explain the critical role of social capital in their article "The Social Capital of Twenty-First-Century Leaders" (which is the ninth chapter of Elsevier's Out of the Box Leadership):
"In contrast to human capital (traits and behaviors), social capital refers to relationships with other actors, and the accompanying access to information, resources, opportunities, and control. Because organizational leadership involves accomplishing work through others, it is critical that we assess the social capital of leaders."
What does the social capital of leaders tell us? Brass and Krackhardt summarize the state of the art with two broad strategies: "strong tie" and "weak tie."

Connecting to Central Others--The Strong Tie Strategy

Strong ties refer to close, trusting relationships. To motivate the strong tie strategy, consider which connections will most help Greg to lead ABC Associates, pictured below. Each link represents the regular sharing of work-related information:
With the additional insight that Stephanie, Stewart, and Kathy each manage separate sub-teams within the above organization, it becomes clear that Greg should establish strong ties to these three central figures.
The strong tie strategy helps Greg support a cohesive team with just a few direct relationships. Notice that it also makes Greg completely dependent on Stephanie, Stewart, and Kathy. This may not be a problem, since Greg is able to build loyal and trusting relationships with each of these highly connected others. However, this loyalty comes with a price: Greg's tight-knit team of managers will be relatively impervious to outside ideas and highly susceptible to group-think.

Connecting Others Who Are Not Connected--The Weak Tie Strategy


Suppose that ABC Associates flattens its organizational hierarchy by eliminating middle managers and increasing collaboration among their former direct reports. At such a re-engineered ABC Associates, Greg faces a more complex terrain of relationships where the strong tie strategy breaks down:
With responsibility for such a dispersed team, Greg can no longer establish his leadership with just a few loyal lieutenants. Instead, Greg must rely also on weak ties, which refer to acquaintances and other distant colleagues.
In the example above, Greg connects to each of his seven work groups with a strategic combination of strong ties (dark edges) and weak ties (light edges). With his weak tie strategy, Greg wins influence over the organization through his unique access to a wide variety of novel resources and information. As long as he can continue to maintain relationships with such a diverse group of contacts, Greg is in an ideal position to promote innovation within his organization.

Choosing Between the Strong Tie and Weak Tie Strategies

Brass and Krackhardt devote the second half of their paper to contingencies that influence the relative effectiveness of the strong tie and weak tie strategies. Briefly, these include
  • Surrounding network structure: densely connected groups support a strong tie strategy, while sparsely connected or dispersed groups support a weak tie strategy.
  • Career stage: a strong connection to a powerful mentor helps early in one's career but limits growth opportunities later.
  • Boundaries to entry: those who struggle to enter established networks (such as women, minorities, or new managers) can overcome these barriers with a strong tie strategy; otherwise, a weak tie strategy generally leads to faster promotions.
Most significantly, Brass and Krackhardt discuss the impact of rapidly changing environments and technologies, concluding that "rapid change may make strong ties obsolete."

Implications for training and research

More on that soon.

[Thanks to Tiziana Casciaro for bringing this article to my attention.]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License and is copyrighted (c) 2006 by Connective Associates except where otherwise noted.