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Organizational Effectiveness

Getting things done in most companies depends more on the informal structure of employees (or internal network) than on the org chart (or formal structure). Visualizing and understanding this informal employee network is essential to your company’s success, whether you’re trying to gauge the effectiveness of a reorganization effort, break down barriers to collaboration, identify key talent for future development, improve performance of individual teams and groups, or assess potential risks to retaining institutional knowledge.

Activate Networks applies Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) through its online application, ONA Navigator™, to allow organizations to explore their employee networks by department, function, and office geography. From its graphical dashboard to its detailed views that drill into critical areas, the ONA Navigator™ provides organizations with a powerful tool for setting organizational goals and managing them by

  • Identifying the right kinds of connections between influential employees and teams across departments that facilitate innovation, and the right kinds of connections needed for rapid new product development
  • Identifying the right kind of connections needed for better collaboration, and the employees who are already crossing boundaries and facilitating collaboration organization-wide
  • Determining the kinds of networks between Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, Product Management, and the rest of the organization that are necessary for sales effectiveness, and measuring a company’s existing networks against benchmarks.

Using simple survey data or readily available e-data (such as email traffic data), Activate Networks maps the offline professional social network among your employees to provide you with group- and employee-level insights to address some of the most important challenges facing organizations today.

Innovation

Innovation today is seldom the work of a lone genius. Instead, it’s often the result of collaborative efforts that combine seemingly unconnected ideas in new ways. This kind of innovation—not just of products, but also of processes and business models—often emerges from the areas at the intersection between functions and disciplines. Activate Networks’ ONA Navigator™ can help you increase innovative collaboration and determine where the roadblocks to innovation exist in your organization’s intra-company network.

Collaboration

With the rise of globalization and the increasing specialization of knowledge-based work, collaboration—across functions, locations, business units, and even organizations—has never been more important.

There’s also such a thing as too much connectivity. Employees who are overwhelmed with requests and other relational demands will burn out, and their performance will suffer. Activate Networks’ ONA Navigator™ applies Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) to enable executives see the ties between specific groups and individuals, and then design targeted programs to cultivate the connections that create value.

Revenue Growth

Financial reports and budgeting processes tell a limited story about value creation. What they miss is the fact that economic returns are created, in large part, by interactions. Revenue growth depends on collaboration—collaboration across product, functional, and geographic lines, within account teams, and with clients. Activate Networks’ ONA Navigator™ maps the collaboration that is, or is not, taking place within your company, providing a sound basis for action.

Change Management

Even with lots of preparation and substantial resources, large-scale organizational changes often don’t live up to their promise. One problem is that an organization’s informal networks do not necessarily shift along with the formal structure.

Additionally, many restructurings require people to work across boundaries in new ways. Think, for instance, of a firm that decides to shift from a regional to a global structure, or of a company trying to integrate new acquisitions. Without targeted, network-building initiatives, chances are that people will stick to their familiar patterns of collaboration. The result can be a disastrous disconnect between informal networks and strategic objectives. Activate Networks’ ONA Navigator™ enables you to take the first, incisive step: knowing what and where your company’s informal social network is and exactly how it’s functioning.