Leverage Organisation Network Analysis (ONA) for improving Productivity, Team Dynamics to Inclusion, Engagement, Culture, Leadership, and Execution of your team using OrgLens platform
Measuring Social Capital and mapping social networks within an organization using Organizational Network Analytics
My dad always told me when I was in the school that hard work, knowledge and expertise will make me successful in life. Which dad does not want his kids to be successful? I am sure that most dads will have some mantra for success that they tell their kids, like my dad had his mantra, hard work, knowledge and expertise...
The insights from OrgLens platform have applications in Productivity, Team Dynamics to Inclusion, Engagement, Culture, Leadership, and Execution.
OrgLens studies the network relationships, analyses the differences in network behaviour of diverse groups and their current level of immersion.
OrgLens studies the real time inner workings of the organization to measure the level of activity in the entire network.
OrgLens gives insight into which teams in your organisation are the most collaborative with a high degree of connectivity.
Clients
Nodes
Graphs
Connections analysed
It’s a great tool in helping organisations understand the power of the informal structure. For us it measurered the social capital of leaders, ranks their influence, in the organization by studying the patterns of communication and positions of people within the network of the organizational relationships. The study goes behind and in-between the formal structure to perform an Ultrasound of the social interactions in organisations to understand how employees REALLY work together to share information, ideate, build trust, make decisions and solve problems. The great benefit of this study was the different cuts in which the data was presented only from a list of seven questions! Excellent insight team! Keep up the good work!
We are grateful to the ODA team to give us this opportunity to experience this tool. We have realised the power of this tool and would surely want to be a part of this journey in the times to come. The findings were indeed very relevant for us which otherwise we were not able to identify. And while we looked at the findings, it was also a great learning opportunity for us to look at employees and the power / impact of their social network in organisational context through a very different lens.Thanks once again to you and the ODA team.
Social Network Analysis (SNA) is a data-driven process of understanding social structures (links, connections, bonds between people in any part of society) through the use of networks and graph theory. SNA allows us to better understand how individuals are connected, and how information flows – this is critical for improving communication and mobilizing knowledge and resources. When SNA is applied to map the interactions and relationships in an organisation, it is referred to as an ‘Organisational Network Analysis’ (ONA), and if it is extended to include other entities than people, it is called a Link Analysis.
Organisational Network Analysis (ONA), a subset of Social Network Analysis (SNA), is a data-driven process of visualizing and analyzing informal relationships in the organization. A network analysis reveals patterns of collaboration and influence that are very different from the formal hierarchical structures that leaders rely upon to understand operations and make decisions. An ONA is able to provide detailed information about hidden factors for success, such as flow of information, decision-making, revenue-impacting collaborations, innovation, inclusion—even trust, engagement levels, and energy.
The focus of both, an SNA and an ONA, is to understand the network structure rather than the individual characteristics of the people in the network.
There are two ways of conducting an ONA, depending on the source of data used - active and passive.
Understandably, active ONA is generally a one-time event, but passive ONA can give an analysis over a time period. Here are the key differences, summed up:
| Category | Active ONA | Passive ONA |
|---|---|---|
| Data Source | Surveys, questionnaires, all self-reported | Employee metadata:email, IM, collaboration data |
| Frequency | Snapshot, point-in-time data | Aggregate data over time periods or specific events, continuous monitoring (real-time) |
| Advantages | Survey questions offer greater context of relationships - causality, sentiment | View of volume, external relationships, easily scalable, many data option types, workflow |
| Risks / Bias | Low response rates, individual bias | Privacy concerns, requires context |
Though there is a hierarchical structure in any organisation, people interact beyond these formal structures, and slowly and steadily an informal network evolves within the organisation. These informal interactions determine the undercurrents and decide how the organisation evolves. Conducting an ONA gives an organisation the power to generate insights that determine how information flows through these networks, and how the organization can increase its operational effectiveness by making specific and targeted changes to increase collaboration and the exchange of information between the right people. Learn more ...
The general steps involved in conducting the an active ONA, is as follows:
The general steps involved in conducting the an passive ONA, is as follows:
Social Capital is the interpersonal relations, social networks, shared sense of identity, and trust within a society or organisation. In other words, social capital refers to features in a social organisation such as trust, norms, and networks that can improve the efficiency of the organisation. The concept of social capital was initially defined by sociologists as the aggregated value of connections between individuals and the norms of reciprocity developed from the network. Social capital is a commonly identified trait of social organization and includes trust between individuals and interpersonal connections that could increase the efficiency of society and create platforms that could be beneficial to all the parties. Social Network Analysis(SNA) and Organisational Network Analysis(ONA) helps us understand the social capital of a community or Organisation.
