Build strong relations with your colleagues and you will be successful. This has been a common mantra for many years. However, when faced with new challenges, many employees have found to their surprise that their internal network and relations fail to provide them with sufficient answers and inspiration.
My advice earlier this year was to start networking right away, but a recent conversation with Christian Waldstrøm, Associate Professor at Aarhus School of Business, brought to my attention that the value of internal networks may in fact be overrated. Waldstrøm has found that internal networks tend to lock stakeholders into unfortunate inter-relations while fostering habitual thinking and stereotyping patterns.
Years of attending J. Boye group meetings and listening to practitioners has taught me that mergers, acquisitions, regular reorganisations and other significant organisational changes are common. Today the best contact to help solving a problem may be the experienced manager in the finance department: tomorrow he may be gone and the newly hired graduate in sales may be the right person to turn to for advice. Organisations are often more fragile than they may seem from the outside. Who can you really turn to when you have a challenge?
In his recent Danish book called Corporate Networking, Waldstrøm explores how internal networks can be “fixed”. One of his new and refreshing suggestions is to highlight the strategic importance of networking by implementing a new position as Chief Networking Officer. I have never been a fan of fancy titles, and frankly this seems like overkill to me.
A strong internal network of relations can certainly be valuable, but external relations may be more valuable and helpful in times of change. If you know somebody who has solved a similar problem, you can always contact him/her irrespective of organisational changes. In addition to ideas and potential solutions, you also get a fresh outside perspective and the opportunity to meet peers who share your challenges. If you are able to connect with somebody who has solved some of the issues you are facing, the solution might need to be adapted to your organisation, but you don’t need to reinvent the wheel entirely.
It is easy to maintain a dialogue with consultants, analysts, software vendors or others who have a monetary interest in the relationship and will keep calling you as long as you pay the bill. Maintaining an external network of peers takes more energy, but I highly recommend it!
Thanks to @oscarberg, @RichardHare and @roieedery for valuable input.
Disclaimer: J. Boye manages 25+ groups with members from different organisations in our community of practice. J. Boye also runs company internal CoPs.
Tom Graves September 22nd, 2009 22:54
(Thanks to @oscarberg for pointing me here.)
You’re correct about the value of external networks to individuals. The danger for the organisation is that an over-emphasis on external support risks fragmenting the organisation itself, because values will be shared by/with the peer group more than with the organisation. There’s also a high risk that, without an adequate internal network, individuals _must_ share confidential or business-critical information with ‘outsiders’ in order to be able to do their work.
The internal peer-networks _are_ ‘the enterprise’ of the organisation, often literally so in a functional and/or operational sense. Far too many organisations focus obsessively on the ‘vertical’ non-peer reporting-relationships, and neglect the ‘horizontal’ peer-to-peer relationships through which work coordination and problem-solving actually take place. Without support for those peer-networks, the organisations dies as an active shared enterprise, and fades back to little better than an animated corpse, “an empty thunder / signifying nothing”.
Individuals need their networks to do their work, and develop as professionals and in themselves. In practice, individuals need a balance of external and internal networks; but the existence of the organisation itself depends on the viability and strength of its internal networks. Executives and others who neglect to support their internal networks have only themselves to blame.
Stig Andersen September 22nd, 2009 22:54
Hi Janus.
Thank you for yet another instructive post. I agree with you. A community around the product or platform used, be it CMS, ERP, ESDH or whatever, are very valuable, maybe even critical. When we help clients to choose the right product, this is one of many criteria: can the client potentially get access to an informal community and perhaps – over time – a “guild” of users. Here they will hear frank and open heartedly about best practice and how-not-to do. Yes, we as consultants can hopefully help a long way with either detailed insight or perspectives, but we will never “feel the pains” the same way as our client’s peers do.
I endorse the communities J. Boye host (from what I hear, and know first hand years back). But also encourage users to engage in networking on their own hand.