Organizational Network Analysis

Why is it that over 70 percent of major change initiatives fail?  Is there a common element that causes the majority of mergers and acquisitions to not perform to expectations or simply fail outright?  What is it that causes so many projects to consistently run late and over budget?  Why do some people get their work done effectively and on time while others seem to always be holding up projects?

The answer is often found in the working relationships, the trust-based human or social networks that develop in organizations without regard to the imposed hierarchy of the formal organization chart. Companies build their assumptions on their organization chart and process maps holding the belief that they are accurate representations of the way their people work and communicate.   The fact is that neither the organization chart nor process maps accurately reflect how people actually work and communicate with one another because they cannot account for the informal relationships that develop naturally between people in organizations.  It is these webs of relationships within informal networks that define how work actually gets done.  These informal relationships are omnipresent and impact throughout the organization in areas that leaders have historically not been able to measure with any degree of confidence.

While we know that informal networks exist and witness their power and effect in the workplace every day, they have historically been either invisible or too difficult to decipher.  As a result, organizations make critical decisions based on assumptions that have a high probability of being invalid.  Leathers Milligan’s KĒS Analytics removes the risk this imposes by providing an organizational diagnostic that applies Social Network Analysis methodology with the proven algorithms to learn who interacts with whom, how often and perhaps why they need to interact to get their work done.  It quantifies the knowledge related skills such as decision making, problem solving, trust, communication, innovation and learning within an organization. KĒS highlights what happens in the white space on the organization chart and fills in the gaps in the formal process maps.

Leathers Milligan KĒS Analytics will identify the less than 10% of employees who are the key connectors within the oganization—the people who maintain or redirect the company’s culture—helping leadership identify the emerging or “shadow” leaders, mentors, rising stars, problem solvers and holders of key know-how.  These informal or “unofficial” networks are the social capital of an organization; they can adapt to or resist change, transmit or withhold information and enhance or stifle collaboration.  In short, these invisible social networks are often the determiner of the ultimate success or failure of projects and initiatives.  Unlike other approaches, the data in this process are scientifically derived and identify the causes of organizational issues, not simply their symptoms; they replace intuitive supposition with scientific fact.  KĒS Analytics uses these data to provide leadership with fact-based recommendations to make informed decisions and suggest solutions that will work.

Interpersonal networks are founded on trust, and KĒS Analytics makes these networks—the trust and communication paths—both visible and measurable allowing organizations to identify relationships and leverage them to both their own and their employee’s advantage.   The Leathers Milligan KĒS Analytics maps provide an accurate visualization of the various interpersonal interactions within any organization. They are used to define and analyze the current state of the entity. The Leathers Milligan KĒS Network Analysis evaluation provides gap analysis that can be foundational to any strategy, process map, workflow project or merger or acquisition to reduce risk, better predict outcomes and improve bottom line performance.

Organizational Effectiveness & Talent Development

Whether working to improve team performance, develop future leaders or retain current talent, KĒS is foundational to virtually any organizational effectiveness or talent development effort.  It tells you not only how your organization works, but also why it works the way it does.  It singles out the communication conduits, identifies the “valves” that can either foster or cut-off information flow and exposes the influencers who have great cultural knowledge and are highly influential, but generally work quietly behind the scenes to great effect. It tells you exactly how teams are really working, who your top 5% really are and identifies the people whose retention is critical to your ongoing success.

Strategic Planning

Too often strategic plans are built on weak foundations.  Traditionally we have assumed that organization charts and process maps accurately present functional reporting as well as communication relationships and workflow, but that assumption is high risk. KĒS Analytics, employed before conducting a strategy session, will give the participants scientific insight into the actual workings of the organization.  It will provide focused insight into organizational competency evaluation and validate SWOT analysis.  KĒS will expose people who should be included in the formal strategic planning process and also identify those people best tasked with goals and change initiatives that result from strategic planning; the people most committed to and able to generate “buy-in” to assure successful accomplishment of the objectives.  KĒS will identify the people most likely to be resistant to change as well.

Mergers and Acquisitions

Whether you are a Private Equity professional, Venture Capital investor or simply one business acquiring another, KĒS Analytics will reduce the risks and lower the costs of virtually any transaction by giving you scientific insight into how the target organization actually works.  It will tell you where the key know-how resides and which people are the real drivers of the organization.  KĒS Analytics can be instrumental in “right-sizing” the company and successfully navigating the cultural change that is always a part of a transaction.

When KĒS Network Analysis is applied post-closing, for example six months to a year later, it provides a scientifically valid picture of exactly how the organizations are becoming integrated; it exposes the evolution of informal networks as the target entity transits the integration process.  This insight gives executives reliable data upon which to continue to fine tune the assimilation and accurately refine organizational leadership, structure and processes.  KĒS can reduce the time to complete an integration by up to 75% thereby lowering costs and dramatically improving bottom line performance.

While organizations like formal, hierarchical structures, the reality is that they all have informal networks that can be very close to or quite divergent from the hierarchy.  KĒS Network Analysis serves as the guide to help merge the theory of the hierarchical organization chart with the reality of the informal networks to achieve optimal organizational effectiveness.

Leathers Milligan is uniquely poised to guide you through this form of discovery. Give us a call to discuss the analysis in more detail.