Refereed Publications Abstract

When companies experience organizational pain, their first response is often a structural fix, such as decentralizing, breaking down silos, or shifting to a matrix organization.
Many such efforts have only limited success because formal organizational charts mask the invisible networks that employees use to get things done.
Investing time and energy to understand networks can help companies measure the effectiveness of major initiatives and make organizational changes stick.
In many cases, a key to success is focusing on “brokers,” who serve as bridges across a number of subgroups in a network and are easy to overlook because they occupy the “white space” of organizations.

Exhibit 1: The number of relationships brokers have may be small compared with those of influential connectors.
Exhibit 2: In focusing on eliminating bottlenecks and improving connections among key employees, one company increased the ratio of employee ties that were external to their functions by 13 percentage points.
Sidebar Exhibit: Analysis can help employees understand how they compare with peers on dimensions such as information sharing, mentoring, and social interaction.