Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) a tool to measure and graph connections and patterns of collaboration between people within and across organizations. It’s a data driven approach to understand how communication, information, decisions, and resources flow across formal and informal networks of people. ONA helps leaders understand hidden informal network to uncover knowledge gaps and influence strategic change. This data discovery helps leaders reveal how to drive strategic change initiatives, lead sustainable business transformations, and establish cross-functional collaboration.
The goal of ONA questions if to help us discover:
How strongly connected is your organization? How tightly integrated are your regions, departments, teams, etc.?
Who are the influencers within the organization that could be tapped to drive impact?
Where are the groups that are potentially isolated? What areas need support in creating strong cohesion?
See below for details on three different ONA data slides found in your Entromy report.
Slide titled: “20 potential influencers identified”
What the numbers mean:
Each category like Strategy, Innovation, etc. is linked to a question in the Collaboration section. For example, for “Problem Solving” the question states “Which individual(s) do you reach out to most frequently for help in solving new or challenging work-related problem?”
One nomination = 1 point. The scores in the table represent the number of nominations a person received for each statement
A responder can submit the name of any employee in the company, there is also an option to do a write-in response
How to use this data:
Note: This output is not for a large group discussion – this is for CEO/CHRO etc.
Begin with a hypothesis on who you expected to see on the influencer list - which departments, titles/seniority-level and individuals did you expect would show up as influencers within the organization?
Department-level: Which departments are showing up? Are these the departments you expected to see as having high influence in the organization?
Senior/Tenure level: Which titles are showing up? Is the leadership team visible? What is the profile of the leadership strengths? What are people going to them for?
People level: What are individuals recognized for? Who are the people driving the business (who is driving strategy, innovation, etc.)?
Some reminders:
Looking at the overall nomination scores, the absolute difference between individuals is of lesser importance (e.g., 38 vs. 35 is not of material importance). You should be looking at the top influencers as a group that has a sphere of influence. However, it is helpful to scan vertically at the total column to see if there is a material drop off in total scores. For example, if overall scores drop from 50 to 15, it may indicate the need to enable stronger connection within the organization. The question to ask is – why is there a big drop off? Are the communication / collaboration channels open? Do individuals have the right training and mentorship opportunities to develop their skill sets?
Each organization is different. This data should be put in the context of what you expected to see given the context of the organization, their plans for future, etc.
FAQ: Is there a bias in the scores based on sphere of influence? Are some departments pre-disposed to higher nominations?
Yes. The individuals leading larger teams may have larger number of nominations. To understand how people are collaborating across teams, refer to the “Collaboration and outreach between group” results. That chart shows whether a group is insular or whether it’s connected across the org. An individual with very high nomination who sits in a group that has 95% in-group collaboration would mean that most of the nominations for this individual were from within their organization.
Slide titled: “Collaboration and outreach between groups”
What the numbers mean:
Number of recommended influencers: # of people in the department who were nominated as influencers
Note: Recommended influencers are a subset of individuals that provide the broadest coverage of the organization. Entromy filters out redundant people from the list (e.g., those with overlap)
Outreach patterns:
In group: % of nominations in a department (e.g., sales) that are for people within the same department (e.g., sales)
Other group: % of nominations in a department (e.g., sales) that are for people outside of that department (e.g., finance, product, marketing)
External: % of nominations in a department (e.g., sales) that are people outside of other departments (e.g., finance, product, marketing). Entromy platform allows for write-in nominations
Nomination per average responder: For Marketing, everyone who responded to the survey, nominated 2.2 number of people on average
Slide title: Map: Collaboration between teams by Department
This visual map of the organization shows you the level of closeness and collaboration in the organization. This output is generated from the questions in the Collaboration section. Each dot represents a department (in the collaboration by department chart). The line weight connecting two departments shows the strength of collaboration between teams
What the numbers on the lines represent:
A number on a line linking Sales & Marketing = [Salespeople nominated by Marketing + Marketing people nominated by Sales] / Total number of people in Sales and Marketing
A high number indicates that majority of the nominations made by those two groups were between each other.
The data in the “Most influential teams” table is the sum of all the numbers on the lines.
Each organization is unique and therefore the numbers can vary significantly between organizations.
What important to note is the relative ranking of the departments on this table. The departments at the top are the ones that are highly collaborative compared to others
Much like the other slides in the ONA section, it’s important to approach the results with a hypothesis in mind. Questions to ask yourself:
Which department did you expect to see in the center?
If there was a merger, do you notice any silos? Are there groups that are disconnected from others?
Which teams should be working closer together but are not connected?