Using our customised Synap tool, Synergia can advise on successful strategies to bring about change and avoid pitfalls when working with networks. We can help you:
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- Achieve fast change through networks
- Spread innovation and best practice across networks
- Design performance systems that work in a networked world
- Create knowledge management infrastructure across networks
Synergia's experts will work with you and your team to improve the performance of your networks, based on the Synap insights.
Each case is unique, however, there are five areas of broad opportunity:
1. Leveraging the power points of network hub point.
All networks have hubs (influential people, teams, organisations, ideas – depends on the unit of analysis) that are powerful within the network. Some are powerful because they are highly connected and well linked to other powerful hubs. Others are powerful because they are 'go-betweens' and cross boundaries between networks or link to people who are otherwise poorly connected.
Synergia will work with you to identify the power points in your networks and to help you understand how they have influence. From this, we can develop actions to better mobilise their influence for improving performance against your strategic purpose.
2. Identifying positive and hindrance networks
Not all influential people or sub-networks will be positive and supportive of an organisation's purpose. Synap can join attitude and behavioural analysis and social network analysis to identify and visualise positive and hindrance networks within an organisation (for example around attitudes to a change programme).
Synergia will work with you to identify positive and hindrance influences within the social network and to develop the best way to counteract these influences, within the context of maintaining a strong and positive social network.
3. Evolving fit-for-purpose networks
Some social network structures may have weaknesses or be a poor fit an organisation's strategic purpose. For example, poor social networks across organisations or professional groupings where collaboration is critical to innovation and performance.
Synergia will work with you to review the Synap results against your strategic purpose, developing a plan of action to build fit-for-purpose network structures.
4. Building powerful networks
We believe that building stronger functional social networks will become a core skill of senior managers and especially HR professionals in the future. Building networks requires changes to leadership, organisational environments and skill development programmes. It will also require changes to the expectations for the functions of senior managers (for example high performing executives have broad based networks that fulfil efficient information processing and intelligence functions).
Synergia will work with organisations to help develop their HR strategies and organisational development programmes to enhance the development of effective social networks.
5. Seeding self adapting networks
All the points above assume that management takes a role in actively designing and influencing networks to improve performance. Another strategy is to acknowledge that networks organically change and grow themselves, and to trust in the network itself taking a greater leadership role in the organisation. In this approach, the network itself begins to take accountabilities for specific outcomes and evolves and adapts to deliver these. These approaches may be useful in professional groups and tech innovation teams, where flat structures and rich information flows are essential.
Synergia will help you to create an environment in which networks are boundaried with purpose, opportunity, resources and reward. They will be supported so they can evolve to find the optimal way in which to work together.