It Takes A Village: Change Management As Community Building

Change management requires strong hierarchical leadership. That's the wisdom purported by conventional change management theory. How else could we drive significant change through large organizations if not by virtue of committed leaders who use their authority to reinforce desired behaviors by rewarding adopters and removing obstinate resisters? It is tempting to believe that organizational change is easier to achieve within a strictly hierarchical structure, but social network theory tells us otherwise. Diffusion of change relies on network density, and hierarchical networks have very little of that.

Let’s first consider how hierarchy hampers change before we turn to ideas for rewiring organizational networks to promote the diffusion of change.

The Hierarchical Tree

Charles Kadushin’s book Understanding Social Networks is a great introduction to social network theory and provides the concepts for describing organizations in network terms. The elemental building blocks of networks are nodes and links. The nodes represent the persons, the links indicate the relations among them.

A few principles determine how nodes are linked in a hierarchical organization:

• The principle of unity of command stipulates that every employee should receive orders from only one superior. This means that nodes have no more than one link connecting them to a single higher-ranked node (except for the highest-ranked node, typically the CEO). But any node may have zero or more lower-ranked nodes. This results in the familiar tree-structured organigram.
• The principle of line authority grants managers the formal authority to give instructions and obtain obedience. In terms of network theory, this means that the link between superior and subordinate is unidirectional and asymmetrical. Influence flows from top to bottom.
• A related principle is that of the scalar chain or chain of command. The chain of command is the entire line of authority from top management to the lowest ranks along which instructions are passed. This implies that links in a hierarchy are transitive, meaning that instructions from one level are binding for all subordinate levels.
• Hierarchies avoid redundancy. There are no links skipping levels of hierarchy. There are also no horizontal links connecting nodes ranked on the same level, nor are there diagonal links, cutting across hierarchical levels and different strands of the hierarchy at the same time.

Clogging In The Change Cascade

Hierarchical structures create multiple barriers to the diffusion of information inside organizations:

• Hierarchical networks increase the distance between nodes. Distance refers to the number of nodes one has to pass through to connect two nodes in a network. Vertically, information traveling from the top to the bottom needs to pass through every node along the chain of command.
• Hierarchies imply many so-called structural holes. These are nodes that bridge different parts of a network that are otherwise not linked. In a hierarchy, exactly one path connects any two nodes. This means that pass-through nodes have to process a lot of information that may not be relevant to them, increasing the likelihood of congestion. It also means that each node is empowered to function as a gatekeeper and information broker. Information can be delayed, blocked, distorted, or a toll of some kind can be extracted for letting the information pass through. If a node blocks the flow of information, the entire subsequent branch is cut off.
• Hierarchies were generally not built to facilitate the bottom-up flow of information. But let’s consider what happens when each bottom-node sends a signal upward. As information from lower nodes rises through the hierarchy, it must squeeze through an ever-decreasing number of nodes. This bottleneck effect may quickly overwhelm the system’s throughput capacity. Signals get filtered and very few percolate to the top.
• If the chances of information traveling from the bottom of the hierarchy to the top are already slim, imagine the difficulties of sideways communication between two nodes at the bottom of two distinct branches. The information would have to travel first up and then down again, overcoming all the described obstacles along the way.

As we see, a hierarchy is not the ideal structure to promote the efficient diffusion of ideas. To the contrary, it empowers a maximum of nodes to veto the passage of information and, thus, is more suitable for the preservation of the status quo.

Network Density Promotes Diffusion

Diffusion of information (ideas, values, practices, etc.) benefits from dense networks. The greater the number of direct links between the nodes, the greater the likelihood that information can spread through the entire network. In a dense network, individuals have access to multiple connections they can use to advance their cause. If they fail to persuade one connection, they can move on to the next one. Change agents can also generate strength in numbers by activating multiple connections simultaneously and combining resources.

Network density makes it more likely that so-called thresholds and tipping points can be reached. Social influence is most effective when it comes from all directions. One might have to hear the same argument from several sources before the threshold is reached where a person decides to join a movement. Once enough people have adopted a change, a tipping point is reached beyond which a movement ‘takes off’ without requiring any further external stimulation.

Rewire The Organization For Change

Pure hierarchies don’t exist in the social world. Social systems self-correct against the limitations of hierarchies by developing informal networks. People at all levels subvert the carefully constructed system of authority by creating the informal backchannels required to get things done. Organizations can make a big difference by actively encouraging and participating in this rewiring process.

There are many ways to rewire an organization. In 2013, Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, ripped out the hierarchical management structure and put holacracy in its place, a new structure that aims to encourage collaboration. It is a daring and admirable experiment. For many change makers, this option may feel too bold or simply out of reach. An alternative approach is to incrementally develop a hybrid network, by draping new links, formal and informal, around the hierarchical system.

Density in social networks can be increased in many ways. Conceptually, we can distinguish five mechanisms:

• Nodes that were previously not connected can be connected.
• Unidirectional links can be turned into reciprocal ones where influence can flow in both directions.
• Single-stranded links can be transformed into multiplex ones, where nodes are linked to one another by more than one kind of relationship.
• Relocation of nodes to a different network cluster can prompt the formation of ties to newly proximate nodes.
• Middle-layers of a hierarchy can be removed.

To illustrate further, here are a few practical applications for adding links to a hierarchical system. (If you wish, you can match each application to one or more of the mechanisms described above):

• Managers can practice a participatory leadership style. When team members participate in decision making, influence flows bottom-up.
• A mentorship program can connect individuals that sit in different organizational units and belong to different hierarchical levels.
• Internal employee transfer or rotation programs and the creation of cross-functional or cross-divisional task forces can establish ties where there were none.
• A manager can make it a habit to wander around to check-in with employees who do not report to her directly (Leadership by Walking Around).

Provide Networking Platforms

This is all good stuff. But these applications fail to make use of social systems’ capacity to self-configure necessary links. This, more than anything, will allow the network structure to adapt with agility to changing requirements. People are remarkably good at crafting the connections they need to advance their causes. Organizational changemakers must, therefore, provide the venues where employees can interact and find out about shared interests and complementary capabilities. Provide an attractive social platform, and social links will grow.

Companies can design physical and virtual social platforms that make it easy for employees to intersect outside of their formal reporting lines. Open and flexible workspaces, social media and collaborative online platforms or social gatherings create opportunities for linking up, down or sideways. The task is to look at the work environment in its seemingly mundane details and consider whether its design nudges people towards serendipitous encounters or confines them in their usual circles.

Be A Community Builder

If organizational change is a community activity, then change makers need to be community builders. Next time you set out on a change journey, maybe you want to get pen and paper and sketch the network structure of your organization.

• Start with the primary structure, the top-down hierarchy.
• Next add any existing secondary links, formal or informal, that complement the hierarchical network by allowing influence to flow upwards, sideways, cut diagonally, or skip levels. Consider how any of these links can help you diffuse your change idea through the organization.
• Then, get creative. Where do you want to add new links?
• And how can you promote the self-generation of links in your sphere?

Don’t aim for perfection. The purpose of this exercise is not to create an accurate depiction of the existing network structure in all its minute glory, but simply to apply network thinking as a frame for envisioning potential network structures that will support your change project.