Network within an organisation matters.

Expanding one's network has been understood by most that you do in life or on social media platforms only. Not too many organisation makes internal networking as an agenda or interest for their employees and managers to do.

No one really officially talks about the benefits, let alone encourage...

Our usual utilitarian lens at work

It is perfectly normal of course. For most organisations and unit heads, we prioritise developing a great team, the perfect role, the precise scope & responsibility.

And in order to be sure actions by employees yield results, all relationships have to be first established through a very utilitarian lens. That's why we have the org chart too. In order words, management.

To put it more plainly, the manager is obliged to meet regularly with his or her team only because they need their employees to achieve their objectives, or someone is obliged to connect with a colleague only because he or she needs something extra to complete a certain task.

While there is nothing wrong with that, I argue that any organisation who wants to truly thrive at changing time should consider promoting the agenda of internal networking for their employees. This includes both horizontal (peer-to-peer), and vertical (obtaining mentors and sponsors)

Breaking down Silos.

Nearly every organization struggled with silos across functions, expertise, geography, level, and cultures. Network is about crossing boundary of scope with the potential outcomes of multidisciplinary collaboration.

The sorts of collaboration that tackles higher-value problems. It can be about motivating experts to engage in transmitting their knowledge to other functions, break the knowledge gap. It can also be about an employee community of a specific region wanting to be involved with the activity of another region to build global practices.

Nothing needed to be too calculated, while it can be. For example, someone who has a project and needing a sponsor to make it work. Of course, being authentic and having clear agendas are the key to build great relationships - no matter you are at a work or life context.

Practicing networking for employees and managers boost empathy, diversity & inclusion intelligence, and high level of leadership. Those who put their time and attention to networking have to constantly identify and appreciate knowledge from other silos.

This helps individuals to always stay self aware and continously live up to a level of excellence by questioning their own bias and unknown. It helps to train individuals to know how to support others, confronting differences, plus voicing out his or her value/vision as a professional.

This leads to potential ideas of improvement and many exciting projects when the times do come. Let's call these agents "innovation-ready" :)

Going beyond for the business.

However networking is fluid by nature. It does not guarantee immediate deliverables for companies. Indeed, there is no easy dashboard to show the value of networking - at least not in a quick-win sense.

We can do descriptive analysis on traffic and engagement like we do at social media by using some sorts of internal communication platform, vs employee experiences etc. But real relationships through expanding network for an employee and manager requires time and attention to cultivate. It sometimes take months and years...

In a learning organization, leaders are designers, stewards, and teachers. They are responsible for building organizations where people continually expand their capabilities to understand complexity, clarify vision, and improved shared mental models - that is, they are responsible for learning - Peter Senge.

Trust yields innovation.

To put networking as a culture or an agenda for employees implies aspirational business leaders to first offer full trust that all employees and managers know what they are doing, and that they have the capacity to spark their own collaboration and new ideas with someone else outside of their work scopes.

This is when innovation of an organisation becomes possible. Innovation isn't strictly belongs to the product team, but the way we work together as human, the way we establish new value streams, and identify new opportunities while we grow as a collective.

So is your organisation ready to go beyond the plan, operation and strategy... foster a lot of innovation-ready agents of all expertise and functions? Are your managers and teams ready to give up control and autonomy over a project’s direction?

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I design and run Projects & Programs dedicated to People & Change

I talk about all things?#transformation?#change?#innovation?#people?#creativity. I support leaders to foster?diverse and inclusive?teams, build learning organisations and break down team silos.