I've been brainstorming with Allan Engelhardt recently and one of his well received recommendations was a book called "The Hidden Power of Social Networks" by Cross and Parker. Bill Ives and Suw Charman have also posted reviews to this here and here.
Having made a start on Sunday morning, I was immediately struck by the opening quote from chapter 1 and how much it captured the spirit of management and its inherent difficulties.
It has taken us years, and I think we are still not sure if we are getting things right even after substantial reengineering projects, a move to teams, new HR practices, two acquisitions, and a ton invested in technology. By now, we should have reduced costs and created a more nimble company without a focus on hierarchy and fiefdoms. But it's tough to ensure that this is really happening. Most of us in this room have thousands of people we are accountable for stretched across the globe. It's impossible to manage or even know what's going on in the depths of the organization. I mean, each of us can fool ourselves into thinking we're smart and running a tight ship. But really the best we can do is create a context and hope that things emerge in a positive way, and this is tough because you can't really see the impact your decisions have on people. So you just kind of hope what you want to happen is happening and then sound confident when telling others. Executive Vice President, Commercial Lending.
Talk about a problem statement! I think what's so telling about this quote is that it clearly identifies with the fact that trying to manage people on a large scale is tough. There are just no hard and fast rules to measure and account for decisions and change. This of course is exactly the piece that Social Network Analysis addresses. Furthermore, whilst SNA gives a qualitative picture, Allan and I think that 4G can add to the quality of the relationships too. In other words, we're trying to make the unmeasurable, measurable and therefore manageable.
Keywords: Social Network Analysis, SNA, 4G, Change Management, Management
