Do you know the ... ? You might do indirectly via your
social networking group
Making the connection with your social contacts
Social Networking - What's New, What's Hot by :
Wolski
It was only forty years ago that Dr. Stanley Milgram amazed everyone
with his "small world" experiments, showing that a person could be
connected to any given stranger in the United States by a remarkably
short chain of I-know-someone-who-knows-someone. Those experiments,
which coined the term "six degrees of separation" were a revelation in
the 1960s. Now the concept has become so familiar that it is perhaps
better known in its movie trivia form: "Six degrees of Kevin Bacon."
To better understand what is happening and what it means for individuals
and organizations, we turn to a relatively new field of study: Social
networking. We’ll look at four books. First we’ll see what the ever
insightful Malcolm Gladwell has to say on the topic, in his book The
Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (Back Bay
Books/Little Brown and Company, 2000). Second, we’ll turn to an exciting
new book that’s hot off the presses: Karen Stephenson’s The Quantum
Theory of Trust: Power, Networks and the Secret Life of Organizations
(Financial Times Pearsons, 2006). Then we’ll examine the groundbreaking
academic treatise Structural Models in Anthropology by Per Hage and
Frank Harary, et al. (Cambridge University Press, 1984). And finally
we’ll discuss Robert L. Cross and Andrew Parker’s The Hidden Power of
Social Networks: Understanding How Work Really Gets Done in
Organizations (Harvard Business School Press, 2004).
Malcolm Gladwell’s book popularized the useful and now nearly ubiquitous
term "the tipping point," which in epidemiology describes "that one
dramatic moment in an epidemic when everything can change all at once,"
Gladwell writes. He examines a similar phenomenon in culture. Small
factors, ideas or behaviors gather momentum and become contagious. When
they reach critical mass – the tipping point – they become epidemic.
Gladwell’s experience writing about AIDS for the Washington Post,
convinced him that change is about the "law of the few." He intuitively
realized the powerful role which some people, who spread AIDS or create
buzz for the newest novel or product, can have in moving along a social
epidemic of any kind. Using this model, he shows how the crime rate can
drop or Sesame Street can spread all over the world.
What interests us here is the motive force that Gladwell says drives all
those little things toward their tipping point: People engaged in social
networking. He identifies three types of social networkers: Mavens,
Connectors, and Salesmen. Mavens love to gather knowledge and pass it on
to others. Connectors seem to know everyone. They can get information
where it needs to go. And Salesmen are great persuaders. They are
irresistibly positive and their ideas and attitudes are infectious. When
these three types of people interact with a social network, little
things can turn into big deals with astonishing speed.
Although The Tipping Point is often found in the business section of
bookstores, it’s message is just as applicable to sociology, history,
science and other fields. Plus, it’s simply an entertaining read.
Gladwell approaches his material in a highly intuitive way, but in in a
New Yorker article in December of 2000, he profiled a scholar who
examined the same concepts in a more analytical and rigorous fashion.
Karen Stephenson, a professor and business consultant, studied social
networks within organizations to understand how information and
influence flow in those settings.
By charting the flow of information, she showed how organizations are
evolving from command and control structures, past the trendy world of
networks to a strange new world of networked institutions, paying homage
to Friedman’s spot-on prophecy that the world is both small and flat.
She maps a pattern completely unlike the traditional organizational
chart. She represented each person as a dot and drew lines between them
to show paths of communication. In this way, she showed how information
really flows through a system. At the time, she used her insights to
help IBM create a new business on it and companies better organize their
physical workspaces to accommodate and encourage social networking. Now
that she has put her valuable insights into book form, with The Quantum
Theory of Trust, she may be the Margaret Mead of social networking.
Stephenson has a background in quantum chemistry and mathematics but
earned her doctorate in anthropology, studying the social networks found
among Gibbons. The combination led her to study anthropology through a
bio-statistician lens. She then spent ten years as a professor in the
management school of UCLA before going out on her own, only to be
invited to teach at her alma mater, Harvard, in the Graduate School of
Design. Thus, over thirty years, she has devoted her life to culture and
design, both of which have intricacies that are invisible to the
untrained eye.
Her social networking studies show that information follows through and
around certain archetypes. Some people are Hubs; information pathways
radiate all around them. They know many people and others seek them out.
But Stephenson warns that such people are not necessarily sophisticated
in directing the flow of information. If you want to keep a secret, she
says, don’t tell Hubs since they may be naďve in their attempts to make
connections. Gatekeepers, on the other hand, are expert at managing
information flow. They know whom to tell what and when. Gatekeepers are
an indispensable resource in building effective social networks. A less
visible, but equally important archetype is the Pulsetaker. Pulsetakers
are connected through a variety of networks but choose to STAY below the
radar. They are keen observers of the people and trends around them and
often make excellent mentors and coaches. Machiavelli proved himself the
ultimate Pulsetaker when he described the Medici court.
As Stephenson puts it, "Hubs know the most people; Gatekeepers know the
right people, and Pulsetakers know the most people who know the right
people." Professor Stephenson adds that Pulsetakers make some of the
best change agents.
However, she admits, one rarely finds a pure archetype in real life. She
sees Gladwell’s descriptions of Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen as
useful hybrids of her archetypical Hubs, Gatekeepers and Pulsetakers.
Stephenson Gladwell Hub-Pulsetaker Connectors Gatekeeper-Pulsetaker
Maven Hub-Gatekeeper Salesmen Used with permission 2006 Dr. Karen
Stephenson For her, Gladwell’s Connectors are Hub-Pulsetakers. They
combine the buoyant enthusiasm of Hubs with the finesse of Pulsetakers.
They enjoy knowing a large number of people, without feeling obligated
to form deep relationships with all of them. And they are quick to use
their Pulsetaking skills to find opportunities to bring members of their
network together.
Mavens are Gatekeeper-Pulsetakers. They may not know quite as many
people, but they are more invested in the people they do know. They lead
softly and often imperceptibly by helping, teaching and enquiring.
Salesman are Hub-Gatekeepers. They are masters of interpersonal
communication, picking up on subtle cues to better connect with their
listeners. They get information across, but also seem to put their
listeners under a spell. It is very difficult to say “no” to such a
person.
Finally, Stephenson identifies one more important position. Some people
combine all three of her other roles: Hub, Gatekeeper and Pulsetaker.
She calls them "Strange Attractors". These individuals are often unaware
of the reach of their influence, but they can be a "powerful force for
good or evil," she says. She regularly finds them in organizations and
is relieved they are a limited resource. Once identified, she says they
“should be sparingly sprinkled into any recipe for change.”
Stephenson gained her precise perspective from her early scientific
training and in part by working and studying for years with the deeply
reflective anthropologist Per Hage and Frank Harary, a practical applied
graphics expert. Our next book, Hage and Harary’s Structural Models in
Anthropology. is the forerunner of rigorous social network analysis as
we know it.
The book approaches network theory as a continuation of the work of
structural anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss, who was looking for the
basic unit of kinship, just as there is a basic unit of speech, the
phoneme, in the field of linguistics. Per Hage was a traditional
anthropologist who liked to use stories to show relationships, while
Frank Harary is known for his development of approaches and ideas in
graphic theory. Their work pulled together articles and research to move
the social network community inexorably toward identifying a basic unit
of relationship as “the relationship”, rather than the anthropological
view of kinship as the basic unit of relationship.
They showed the way for how to use graphic techniques in social network
analysis. They did not intend for the technique to “race ahead” of the
theory; rather their focus was on the fusion of economics, sociology,
anthropology and logic. They used "cultural"clues to represent the
smallest particle of a work organization so that readers could see and
decode the cultural particles, which is a bit like decoding the Da Vinci
Code as Dr. Stephenson would say.
In their overview of the history of structuralism in Anthropology, the
authors used famous studies from Margaret Mead to Claude Levi Strauss
and the characters in famous novels to portray relationships among and
between people, food, bodily fluids, rituals and reciprocity. Whether
it’s the kinship roles in Brazil or the role of women, chains of
relationships in networks trump individual relationships for clout and
influence.
It’s a bit like the current US advertisement showing a network of people
behind someone with a mobile phone. Hage and Harary show that it’s the
power of the network and the group. It’s a fascinating book if you enjoy
history and the process of creating visual representation of concepts
like organizational design and analysis.
Although it is out of print, this brief but dense book is well worth
tracking down. When you read through it, you will start to understand
the power of graphic representations of social connections and gain a
new respect for what happens in the social network analysis of
organizations.
For a more hands-on look at how social networking functions in
organizations and how to better manage it, check out The Hidden Power of
Social Networks, by Rob Cross and Andrew Parker. Their book is an
in-the-trenches bunch of tips to understand how social networks, often
invisible to management, can save or scuttle an organization.
The important networking roles Cross and Parker identify include Central
Connectors, Unsung Heroes, Bottlenecks, Boundary Spanners and
Information Brokers (borrowed from the early work of David Krackhardt,
Tom Allen, Karen Stephenson and Malcolm Gladwell), as well as various
types of Peripheral People. They examine factors that contribute to or
inhibit social connections, like physical proximity, time invested in
relationships, length of time known, expertise gaps, network
preferences, and organization positions.
The book is essentially a how-to guide with lists. Using examples from
different types of businesses, the authors encourage managers to look
past the formal hierarchies they have put in place and to analyze the
social networks that actually control the flow of power and information
in their companies. Cross and Parker provide simple tools for that
analysis and suggest practical methods for doing one’s own problem
solving. Knowing about networks and organizational analysis, leaders are
warned to avoid blanket approaches and pinpoint the roles and players
who have leverage in their organizations. Although it lacks the broader
and deeper view of the other three works we’ve examined, this is a good,
practical book to give to first-line supervisors and managers to help
them understand how their networks function.
In different ways, the four books, with their unique insights and
guidance, help explain the complex metaphor of organizational success as
represented by companies like General Electric and BMW. GE, one of the
last century’s most successful organizations, is off to a great start in
this century. Much has been written about the leadership of Jack Welch,
but what has had less media time is the organization’s extensive
reliance on social networks long in place. GE sustains organizational
success decade after decade with different CEOs, thanks in great part to
its fostering and effective use of those networks.
GE is an organization that knows its culture. The leadership knows and
understands the culture’s strengths and weaknesses, the portfolio’s
capabilities, and the reach and strength of its human resource network
across all businesses and functions. Within the culture are protected
core values that are nourished and promulgated among every incoming
generation of employees. The behaviors and performance requirements are
clear and practiced from the top of the organization to every level
below.
Therefore the management of directional tipping points such as the
recent commitment to eco-imagination resound quickly and efficiently,
setting a major organization in a new direction supported inherently and
completely by its extraordinarily connected networks and functions. This
is only the most recent example of a strategic tipping point shifting
the cultural energy of a major company toward its next success agenda.
Stephenson’s theory elegantly explains how a company like GE could
succeed over generations of leaders. She points out that “networks, more
than hierarchy and more than markets, make culture what it is and what
it can be.” (Chapter 5 in manuscript).
GE has done a great job of creating social networks through its
management development curriculum. Its more than 60 year history of
management development programs like Financial Management, HR
Management, Manufacturing Management, Executive Development Course or
Management Development Course at Crotonville, etc. have created informal
networks that get things done. These programs attract the top cadre of
people who become the leaders of businesses over time. What you become
at GE is a function of who you knew when. The transfer of people across
divisions and functions has also kept networking alive and robust. Plus,
there is the annual ritual of the senior management meeting every
January in Boca Raton. The value of networking at this major event is
well known. So in GE, a big measure of knowing you’ll “make it” is “When
do I get to go to Boca Raton?”
Karen Stephenson talks about how trust fuels networks and then how feed
and sustain a culture. Networks are a tool of culture at GE. The GE
culture is fed by the shared values of its members. The company’s
selection process is about seeking people who fit the GE mold. And the
de-selection process is about ridding the organization of those who
don’t fit. “Session C” at GE, the discussion of the characteristics of
top-level executives, is a way of ensuring that the folks who don’t fit
the culture leave while the networks support the rest.
Essentially, networks of trust at work are ways of keeping a company
moving forward through the sharing of information, confidence,
knowledge, best practices. An organization’s ability to use and promote
such networks is key to its success, though it’s a key that is often
overlooked. It is easy to look at GE and see only a charismatic figure
like Jack Welch, but in reality it’s the ebb and flow of information and
trust shared by a complex web of people that keeps a company on course
and nourished by a thriving culture. The four books we have examined,
taken together, provide a roadmap to understanding those networks.
Networks can be difficult to see, but once you spot them, you’ll never
look at an organizational chart -- or ever think of "culture" -- the
same way again.
About The Author
Business, Self Improvement, Communication
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