White Papers

How do highly effective people build, maintain and leverage personal networks in ways that help them produce innovative solutions, execute work effectively and thrive in their careers? Based on interviews conducted with 160 leaders (80 men and 80 women) across 20 organizations, we identified twelve network lessons that invisibly differentiate these top performers.

We analyzed network data collected from more than 30 organizations and 16,500 people over 15 years and uncovered 4 BEST networking practices vital to women’s success. These practices, Boundary-spanning, Efficiency, Stickiness, and Trust- and energy-building, distinguish high-performing women from their less successful contemporaries.

We present examples of people who have transitioned well by creating a productive network, quickly, and detail many small, effective actions that differentiate them from people who struggle or underperform. We also suggest ways organizations and managers can support new hires and newcomers to initiate, engage and refine their networks.

Contrary to popular wisdom, a bigger network is not usually a better network when predicting retention or performance. Rather, what matters is helping employees develop the right network at the right time. We explain how taking a network development (or social capital) approach, can improve how organizations onboard, connect and integrate employees for long-term productivity and retention.

We introduce four practices that are essential for organizations’ successful agile transformation:

• Select agile teams based on human and social capital.
• Proactively manage connectivity with experts outside the team.
• Manage team collaboration and energy/purpose as a network.
• Simultaneously innovate work outcome and adopting network.

Leaders often seek to promote agility through matrix-based designs or through the de-layering of formal structures. Unfortunately, these efforts are disruptive and often backfire. We show how organizational network analysis can help leaders make more targeted investments to enhance organizational agility.