Don't Quit Your Day Job.... Just Yet

Well if you’re like me...or like any other red blooded working man or woman in America... you’re probably hanging by a thread trying to hold onto your motivation to finish out 2019.

I hear you. And I feel you. So today we’re talking about something fun - quitting your job and firing your colleagues. Well, or not… just yet.

Before you fire someone at the end of this year... read this.

And before you quit your job at the end of the year... read this.

The past couple weeks have been filled with internal movement inside the organization I work for. People leaving, promotions, non-promotions, etc.

While it leaves room for lots of gossip -- it also gives room for reflection and analysis of the power of people inside organizations.

David Krackhardt and Jeff Hanson (1993) discuss the power of internal informal networks across organizations and they uncover how individuals and organizations not only benefit from the informal networks but how they can also can increase productivity.

“If the formal organization is the skeleton of a company, the informal is the central nervous system driving the collective thought processes, actions, and reactions of its business units” (Krackhardt, Hanson, 1993, pg. 104).

If you are fed up with your job and ready to quit - ask yourself these two questions.

- What is the formal outline of my organization?

- And more importantly, who owns and contributes to the informal structure?

And if you are manager fed up with the results your team is delivering, and are ready to give someone the boot - ask yourself these two questions.

-What is the formal outline of my organization?

-And more importantly, who owns and contributes to the informal structure?

WHY these questions? And WHY does this matter?

1. It can help predict who is impactful to the organization’s informal performance

2. It will arm you with information to use institutional knowledge to your advantage

3. It will increase the success of overall communication

4. And it will reduce turnover rates

“We learned the significance of the informal network 12 years ago while conducting research at a bank that had an 80% turnover rate among its tellers. Interviews revealed that the tellers’ reasons for leaving had less to do with the bank’s formal organization than with the tellers’ relationships to key players in their trust networks. When these players left, others followed in droves” (Krackhardt, Hanson, 1993, pg. 105).

Further… “If they learned who wielded power in networks and how various coalitions functioned, they could work with the informal organization to solve problems and improve performance” (Krackhardt, Hanson, 1993, pg. 104).

So before you quit - who is in your trust network? And why? Can you lean on those individuals for added tactical or moral support? What information can you yield from them? How can you use it to your advantage?

And before you fire someone - are they pivotal to the trust network? Do you know why? Do you know what would happen when they quit? What links would be broken? How would you mend those broken links? Do you need the rest of their trust network? Can you afford to lose them too?

Krackhardt and Hanson discuss the brilliance of network analysis and I can help you decipher what networks those are, and who they belong to.

So before you decide to put in your notice or give your subordinate the can, work with me to uncover why network analysis can be so impactful and powerful to your organization.

References

Krackhardt, D. & Hanson, J. (1993). Informal networks: The company behind the chart. Harvard Business Review, 71(4), 104.