A Bowl of Candy on Every Desk

I was privileged to attend a lecture by Rob Cross from the University of Virginia a couple weeks ago. His book, Driving Results Through Social Networks is quite good and I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion. In every organization there is the traditional org chart with people assigned to positions. That is how things are supposed to get done, but it is rarely the case.

Have you ever noticed that people who smoke tend to be the most informed people in an organization? This happens because these people take their smoke breaks and talk with people who are outside of their defined organizational space. These conversations transcend the organizational boundaries and allow information to travel more freely.

He told a story about how there was one woman, an assistant in a division who was critical to accomplishing a bunch of distinct processes. To the organization she represented a risk because there was only one of her. The question Rob tried to answer was, how. How did this assistant come to hold so much power? He went through all of the factors and came up blank. It wasn't until he actually visited her and found a huge bowl of M&Ms that he realized the answer. People were coming to her because doing so gave them an opportunity to grab some candy.

As such, I promise to get a bowl and put some candy on my desk. If I can keep from eating it all myself that will indeed be a feat.

But these anecdotes illustrate that the org chart on the website and sent around by HR don't always provide a complete picture of how things actually get done in an organization. You have to understand the social network and see who people go to for activities to understand the complete picture. Cross has a lot of excellent content on how to map that out and get a feeling for the shadow organization.