Astute change management and communications professionals have long recognized the need to engage social networks in any major change project. Social networks came long before Web 2.0. The best discussion of social networks in the analog world comes from Everett Rogers’ classic book, Diffusion of Innovations. Everett uses concrete examples of change – condom use in the post-AIDS 1980s gay community and the use of hybrid seeds among midwest farmers – to illustrate the way large-scale change moves through organizations and other communities. Everett identifies several critical factors for change: clear, observable benefits to making the change, compatibility with existing values (i.e., the change improves some aspect of life people already value), messages tailored to the needs and preferences of diverse audiences, and access to existing systems and opinion leaders (social networks).
The challenge, especially for traditional hierarchical organizations, is that those with institutional power don’t really know who the true opinion leaders are or how they are connected to others. Hence, they don’t really know how information flows through their organizations.
Gary Hamel offered some suggestions on how organizations can identify the real thought leaders and existing social systems. I’m a fan of Hamel’s, but some of these ideas are risky if not downright crazy. Hamel suggests that companies “create a system for ranking the frequency and value of each employee’s contribution to internal wikis or communities of practice.”
Now, imagine how well people will react to being publicly rated by their peers? It’s rather like being stuck in an endless episode of Survivor or Dancing With the Stars. Aren’t corporate politics bad enough already? And don’t most employees have better things to do than to rate each others’ posts?
In fact, there are some fairly easy ways to identify the connectors within an organization. Ask your front-line people. They know where to go for information; they usually know who to trust. Engage people in dialogue. Ask questions. This is why you have communications people on your staff. If they’re good, they are constantly finding new ways to foster the flow of information up, down and sideways within the organization.
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