Organizational Informal Networks

The article ‘Informal Networks: Company behind the Charts’ provides an interesting insight on informal networks in organizations. It reveals how managers focus majorly on strengthening the formal networks and ignore nurturing the formal networks that can be used to steer the company in a crisis situation.

Informal networks refer to the networks employees form by formal/informal interaction. They are strengthened over time and prove to highly adaptive in skipping over entire functions to get crucial work done. Often the managers claim that they have a sound understanding of their company’s informal networks. But that is often inaccurate beyond the first 5-6 people as the managers tend to make assumptions about the people that don’t know and take decisions that ultimately backfire. Often they use tactics like authority, planting moles to get inside information and invite focus groups for meetings to regulate these but to very little effect.

The article mentions 3 basic types of networks in the organization:

The Advice Network: it shows the most prominent players in the organization on which others depend to solve problems and seek advice on technical issues.

The Trust Network: it depicts how employees share political information internally and how they back each other in crisis.

The Communication Network: it reveals how employees communicate with each other with what frequency on company related matters.

The article also talks about the steps a manager can use to find the networks. The first step includes surveys that can be done on the employees asking how they communicate within the organization. It is crucial that the employees do not find the questions very intrusive and they trust that any information will not be shared with their managers. The next step is to cross verify this info and findings are drawn based on collective responses instead of individual ones. Various software are vailable to create networks based on these findings. The article then...