The People Who Make Organizations Go—or Stop

Abstract

We’re all familiar with the truism “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” Managers invariably use their personal contacts when they need to, say, meet an impossible deadline, get advice on a strategic decision, or learn the truth about a new boss. Increasingly, it’s through these informal networks—not just through traditional organizational hierarchies— that information is found and work gets done. Social networks can be powerful political tools as well; few managers can resist the temptation to use their connections to discredit business initiatives they dislike or to support proposals they favor. Most corporations, however, treat informal networks as an invisible enemy—one that keeps decisions from being made and work from getting done. To many senior executives, these intricate webs of communication are unobservable and ungovernable—and, therefore, not amenable to the tools of scientific management. As a result, executives tend to work around informal networks or, worse, try to ignore them. When they do acknowledge the networks’ existence, executives fall back on intuition— scarcely a dependable tool—to guide them in nurturing this social capital. It doesn’t have to be that way. It is entirely possible to develop informal networks systematically. In fact, our research suggests that if senior managers focus their attention on a handful of key role-players in the group, the effectiveness of any informal network can be enhanced. After analyzing informal networks at more than 50 large organizations over the past five years, we’ve identified four common role-players whose performance is critical to the productivity of any organization. First, there are central connectors, who link most people in an informal network with one another. They aren’t usually the formal leaders within a unit or department, but they know who can provide critical information or expertise that the entire network draws on to get work done. Then there are boundary spanners, who connect an informal network with other parts of the company or with similar networks in other organizations. They take the time to consult with and advise individuals from many different departments—marketing, production, or R&D, for instance—regardless of their own affiliations.