An Introduction To Social Network Practice
2007 Jack Ricchiuto
Social network practice is a new science that is transforming the way we think about growing and developing leaders, teams, organizations, communities, and markets.
Below is a graphic overview of 12 dynamics we can map in a network. It's followed by a short article introducing the power and posssibilities of this practice.
The Business Case for Social Network Development
Thanks to the innovation of social network practice, we are starting to understand how the real power of organizations is less in the power of individuals and more in the power of their relationships. In any dynamic system, it's not about how many parts there are, it's how they're connected. It's the quality of the relationships that each member has in an organization - both their value to the whole and their ability to develop more capacity in service to that whole. At the end of the day and throughout, we are smarter together and tend to most support what we create together.
Social network practice is about the focused mapping and intentional development of the networks of relationships that drive performance and learning in organizations and communities. The reference to social is not in a focus on what people do together outside of work; it points to the incredible power of social capital in organizations and markets today, particularly in the area of innovation and change.
We map critical interactional variables like the content and frequencies of people's most important interactions, including the flow of information, the exchange of knowledge, and collaboration on decisions and projects. Maps tell us who is most accessible, trusted, and dependable in giving us feedback on our impact within our networks. We discover who's most isolated, competitive, and in the best position to connect people in the network.
Mapping gives us the intelligence to then develop networks for faster flow of information, questions, and knowledge. They indicate how we can help the best-positioned to shorten paths between people with problems and people with ideas, between people with questions and people with answers.
Social network practice is today being leveraged for a wide range of opportunities and possibilities. We're using them to accelerate learning in new teams and for new team members. We're becoming more strategic in managing the succession process of boomers leaving organizations with unmeasurable intellectual and social capital inside and outside their organizations. We're helping organizations collaborate, innovate, and merge in a more efficient, authentic, and sustainable way than ever thought possible. We're using this practice to better develop teams and emerging leaders in order to get beyond silos and fragmentation in organizations. Understand, that this is a new science and we are just beginning to realize and unleash the immense power of this practice in organizations, communities, and markets.
The power of the practice is in its ability to intersect the cross-disciplines of math-based software, best organization development practices, in a context of sociology, systems, and anthropology wisdom. It is the future of organizational innovation and agility.
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