Human Network Analysis - 6 use cases

Human Network Analysis (HNA) graphs can quickly amaze with fantastic forms and wild colors, but there is the risk that the concepts of HNA are lost in translation, and people only see colorful pictures without internalizing the insights, and then quickly lose interest.

What is the value of this Social Network Analysis and what tangible and actionable insights can we expect?

We have so far identified and proven in 6 generic scenarios, where Human Network Analysis creates value in and for Ericsson.

The process signatures

What they learn first in process mapping: do map the reality, as employees do perceive the process, not how it is described in a document, which might be a very idealized version of what really happens. Not an easy task, of you think about a company of 100.000 people. So it to some extent did come as a surprise to us that HNA applied to collaboration data rather clearly shows process signatures: The big highways of large collaboration interaction follow the process flow in Ericsson.

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Community Analysis

HNA can help with the community analysis in 2 ways: How is the community interacting with the outside world and what are the dynamics within the community.

So far, we have applied this to 5 very different communities. Obviously, a new medicine you try first on yourself, so we have applied it to the Yammer Ericsson on the Move community and the Move as a Team facilitator community (Ericsson on the Move is the name of Ericsson’s global culture transformation). Guess what we found: typical power-law distributions, a characteristic often found in networks. All are equal, but some are more equal in the weight and importance for the community.

We have also look at the 200 Executives in Ericsson. Is that a community? At least that can be a hypothesis or ambition. However, our analysis shows, they are not really. Interaction does not show the chaos of a community but is very much following organizational structures. It was then, when the word of the glass ceiling, and the vertical and horizontal silos crossed my mind.

Pattern detection

From there it was only a small step to ask, whether the Executives do not live up to my expectations or whether we are onto a more fundamental pattern in Ericsson: Twin Talk. The pattern detection use case of HNA has shown that we (we all, not only the Executives) talk more to those who are alike, in age, in tenure and in hierarchy.

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Especially around hierarchy we again and again see ladder patterns, not only in the meeting culture, but in general ways of working, something dangerous to neglect in the hybrid discussion.

Personally, the pattern that most stroke me: How long it takes to build networks in Ericsson (so far, I didn’t come across data from other companies, so for now I don’t know whether it is an Ericsson feature or a global phenomenon).

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Bridge building & bridge builders

The following one might still be organized under pattern detection, however in its importance and consequences it deserves a topic of its own. Bridge building & bridge builders. ?

If networks bear Social Capital (as the word from Robert Putnam goes), then it is a very relevant question: How is this bridge building happening? One pattern is that it takes a very long time. Thus, one current research topic is, how to accelerate bridge building. We do this, by looking at a new species: the bridge builders. The current concept in Ericsson (and I assume in almost all companies) is to think employees and managers. However, looking at the collaboration data we see that there are members of the Ericsson family (employees and managers) that are extraordinary in their networks and collaboration behavior: Size of the network, reach of the network, importance for the network. We call this species bridge builder. The working hypothesis is that if we understand what behaviors make bridgebuilders, we can help others to become better in bridge building.

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Effectiveness of interventions

We do interventions that we hope are increasing collaboration. In the past we had to rely very much on perception, if we wanted to understand, whether our interventions have effect. Now with HNA we have a data-driven methodology to test the effectiveness of the intervention. With this approach we were able to prove the effectiveness both of the Move as a Team workshops as well as the Early Career Program.

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Organizational Transformation

As Ericsson has announced some substantial organizational transformations last year, some questions have grown in immediate relevance: How to measure an organizational transformation? Usually in an organizational transformation you want to create structures that enable a more efficient collaboration. Consequently, with HNA we have a tool to directly looks at the collaboration patterns in the newly created organizations and thus can measure to which extent the initial organizational announcement has become a reality in the collaboration of employees and thus in the new organization culture.

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This was a collection of the various ways in which Human Network Analysis has proven to provide new and additional insights. Obviously, it was only very high-level introduction of the concepts to landmark the various use case applications, not all the insights for each of them. We will come back sharing also more findings and insights.

Of course, you are welcome to share in the comments, in which of those areas you are most interested to learn more, and if you got inspired, where else we could make good use of HNA, be it in the areas mentioned above or completely others: Imagine possible.