Social Network Analysis Assessment
An organisation exists in its people, their relationships and interactions. Away from the structural organisational chart, it is important to understand who interacts with who and the social structure of the organisation, as this will establish who will drive the change.
A social network analysis will identify the change players you need to engage throughout the project, namely, champions and influencers. By establishing who connects with who you can get an insight into the best people to target when a new product is launched to ensure the whole company can be adequately informed as well as have a method of gaining feedback throughout the project.
At Simplify Change we have created a social network analysis assessment that uncovers the relationship patterns of your organisation, creating a powerful tool that will help maintain employee engagement. This assessment is part of the Build step in our BEE methodology, to prepare and plan, creating the foundations to understand the new changes, in a coherent & consistent way so that it’s achievable.
Assesments
This assessment identifies these people in your organisation:
1. Champions
Champions are someone other people trust and go to when they have some problem, when they want to learn about a new process/idea, someone who are always helpful, and that people enjoy to work with. We can see them as the innovators, the ones we should target when wanting to see real changing happening because people around them will hear them and want to follow their path.
2. Connectors
Connectors are someone horizontal to the whole company, having a wide inter-department knowledge and has and is within easy reach of everyone. This person is often focused on operations and knows the processes common to the whole company, making her the person to go when you need information from any other department or access to someone else. On a more local level, they are the person you communicate and interact the most.
3. Hubs
Hubs are the local champions inside each department but with a more practical and technical oriented perspective. A Hub is the go-to person when you need advice for a key decision or you want advice/guidance to put your own ideas in practice.
Sections
This assessment consists of two sections:
1. Structural Information
This looks at who someone is and where they stand in the team from an organisational perspective, for example how long a person has worked at the organisation, what teams they have worked with and their current and previous roles within the organisation.
2. Communications
This section focuses on how individuals communicate with their peers. It asks a number of questions relating to who an individual would go to in a certain situation, who’d they’d most like to work with given the choice and who they communicate with the most. From this, the interactions can be mapped out onto a network chart, through a weighted points system, allowing you to view who is interacting with who across the organisation.
