Talk to most people about social networks inside their company, and the immediate thought will be people wasting time on Facebook. But look beyond the internet and the technical, and all businesses are driven by old-fashioned social networks.
These are the networks that your employees interact through, driving your business, and creating new and surprisingly different ways of doing things. Fostering these networks and the people at the heart of them can help transform your organisation and find new ways of doing things. In particular, it's when people from across your company mix with other people outside their division or team, that the most benefits can be gained.
"When is a company more than the sum of its parts? When its once-siloed business units find a way to harvest innovations in the white space between them," writes Rob Cross in A Practical Guide to Social Networks.
The issue for many companies is that formal job descriptions and organisational charts encourage people to work within the confines of their teams. But it's when knowledge is shared, and different teams mix that real changes start to happen.
Informal networks and, in particular, specific people, tend to break through these walls, benefiting you company. It's the coming together of different expertise that can change how you do things and can even help you find new areas to expand into.
It's when knowledge is shared, and different teams mix that real changes start to happen
Every company should be looking at how it can break down silos and bring together its employees, strengthening the networks that exist and creating new ones.
The first trick is to identify the networks that currently exist and the people that support and grow them. Social network analysis, such as through employee surveys, workflow analysis and conversations with key managers, can help you work out what's going on. From this research, you'll be able to find out what the networks are inside your company, and the people that are most influential and work in the most networks.
It's likely that the results will surprise you. In addition to the more formal, company-controlled networks, such as through working groups, there are more informal networks. Most large organisations have many, possibly even hundreds, of informal social networks that you don't necessarily know about. All of this information is likely to show that your company works in a completely different way to how your organisational charts depict it.
Understanding how your company works is a good first step, but it's important to get into the social networks you've discovered, particularly the informal ones, and work out the ways of making them work harder for you.
"These seemingly invisible webs have also become central to performance and execution of strategy," writes Cross. "Research shows that appropriate connectivity in well-managed networks within organisations can have a substantial impact on performance, learning, and innovation."
By changing the way that your company works to reinforce its networks, you can modify the way that information and knowledge flows around your business.
A good place to start is with the individuals that were key to the networks you discovered. These supporting individuals are natural leaders and the ones that break the mould, changing the way that work is done. By utilising them and their skills, you can get them to help you reorganise your business. It's their knowledge of other teams and departments that can help bring people together.
With their expertise and help, you can examine more formal ways of bringing people together and ways that you can create new networking groups. For example, you may want to introduce a brainstorming day or hackathon, bringing disparate parts of your business together to think of new opportunities for your company. From this kind of networking event, you introduce people that would not normally work together, and the flow of knowledge can open up new ways of working.
It's incredible how much knowledge can be unlocked
More formal technology can help, too. A good place to start is with corporate social networking products, such as Slack, which actively encourage collaboration. Through its dedicated channels, employees can post queries that other interested personnel throughout your business can see and interact with. It's incredible how much knowledge can be unlocked, and how individuals can break free from their day-to-day role to add value in different parts of the business.
Key to making these tools work are the people at the heart of your existing networks. These are the people that can inspire collaboration and push knowledge sharing, encouraging other employees to stop looking internally and start sharing.
While there are no quick and easy methods to improve sharing, there's a universal truth: formal structures silo knowledge, and you need to find a way to unlock and free it.
Read the original post:
The benefits of informal social networks in the workplace - Telegraph.co.uk