Network Effectiveness and Social Media

Strategy Map
Interactive Working Sessions for Packard Foundation Grantees
May 27, 2009

The most pressing issues we hope to address today:

– Move network out of being a hub

– Facilitate more of a dialogue and connection among members
– Metrics and measurement (how to know if you’re succeeding)
– How to prioritize
– How to connect with people who are not necessarily familiar with the
technology
– How to network with VPs of multinational companies—who aren’t online,
don’t want to be public, want to keep a low profile as they’re experimenting
with strategy
– How to mobilize informal networks for specific outcomes (e.g., public policy
changes)
– How to connect people across a broad spectrum of geographic locales
– How to address connectivity, versatility, comfort issues around using the
internet
– Better understand best practices
– How to launch a new network (how to manage governance of network, what
to consider when starting a network)
– Addressing risk management of network
– Mobilizing active and equal participation in the network (not just us activating
the network—empower others to contribute)
– Empowering network members
– Decentralizing network
– Tapping into networks for fundraising
– Maintaining quality control while supporting bottom-up activity
– Finding complimentary partners within your network
– How to tap into online constituency
– Addressing internal organizational challenges: how to explain internally the
opportunity of networking online and incorporate it into work we do
– Develop new technological tools (e.g., website, client tracking database)
– How to get people to adopt what we build
– Overcoming the generational divide among members—how do we avoid
people feeling left behind by our transition online?
– How to use technology to facilitate network activity
– How to tap into social media tools (beyond email listserves)
– Working with partners/teams to help them expand and spread the
organization’s message
 – Using networks for cost effective, broad scale education—across financial,
language, religious barriers
– Soliciting more engagement from people doing work in the field (e.g. in Asia,
Africa, Latin America)
– How to construct a network, draw people into network, get individuals to
submit content to network
– How to use networks to keep alumni a part of organization
– Engaging students and campus partners; connecting mentors and people
through the network
– How to get a dialogue going among network member without having to put in
all of the initial content
– Overcoming barriers to collaboration —breaking through “turfiness” between
organizations; confidentiality concerns
– Better understand case studies around networks and successful network
building
– Use emerging technologies to communicate in an accessible way, while
managing information overload (many partners overburdened with large
agendas, hard for them to juggle incoming information )
– How to get beyond simple exchange of information to create a learning
network
– How to build networks and expand

Our Goals, Hopes, Successes for Today

– Find ways to make people comfortable enough to share content and

information on the web—how to create a safe space
– Better understand the culture and dynamics of networks: who’s at the center,
who’s outside, pushing in, pulling out; who’s reacting to the networks. And
how do you change the network once it’s in place?
– Understand distinction between partnerships and ecosystems
– How to address the difficulty of convincing people to share content online
– Develop strategy to keep momentum going (internally and externally, as
you’re building, growing network)
– Understand how to balance offline and online communication
– Understand how to monitor and track progress online, as well as in network

Our Additional, Emerging Questions

– How do we get past internal resistance to change?

– It’s a huge investment of time on their part and ours: how should we strategic
about choosing and trying tools?
 – How do we capture the result of things happening that we’ve catalyzed
through our tools in the mini-hubs?

Network Basics Presentation: Participant Questions and Comments

– Crowdsourcing and the changing definition of expertise: What are the

tensions at play with crowdsourcing? Is the definition of an expert changing?
○ The question of expertise and accuracy still open
○ It’s necessary to balance top-down, bottom-up information flows
○ SARS example (from presentation) is a good example of balance
between the two: doctor’s expertise is critical to understanding the
issue, even as pull information from varied sources.
○ No one expert exists, but there is still a role with people with deep
knowledge and technical skills
○ When crowdsourcing, one might solicit input from many people, but
not necessarily include it all (not all content is created equal, choosing
is important)
○ Crowdsourcing and publishing: Still hard to develop a quality body of
work out of crowdsourcing. Experts are still needed.
– Ways of Working Wikily: One aspect not included in list of attributes is the
ability to draft
○ A key part of Working Wikily is indeed the ability to capture learnings,
learn from mistakes, and make new mistakes
○ Working Wikily means to prototype and “fail fast”
– Different Kinds of Management for Orgs and Networks: Is the continuum (see
“Established Ways of Working vs. Working Wikily,” Monitor Institute
presentation) different for networks and organizations? Or are there similar
decisions regarding the different styles of management that must be
addressed by both types? Are there different styles of management for
organizations and networks regarding Working Wikily or do the same
behaviors apply?
○ Expectations around how people expect to be engaged is changing:
membership now is not just writing a check and receiving a calendar
○ Well-established networks can themselves move towards the more
“established ways of working”, more “organization” behavior
– Managing investment and Returns: How much time does it take up front to
finally feel like the network isn’t completely centralized, but that the network
takes a life of its own?
○ It’s important to find champions who will bring other people into the
conversation
○ In launching a network, we don’t want to launch it in a way that it’s
solely top-down. But on the other hand, there’s tension in our
 organization to approve everything that goes out—there’s a resistance
to soliciting content from the network
○ Growing a network can take more time initially—especially if it’s within
an organization—more upfront investment, but hopefully more of a
payoff on the back end.
○ External communication: people are used to email advocacy—offers
instant gratification. Social networking/social media requires at least 6
months up front investment before you see the payoff from your
efforts. Large upfront investment to get backend payoff
– Controlling and letting go of networks: What happens as there are more and
more relationships at the edges among entities in that network? How do you
harvest and manage that information and the exchange going on in the
network so that it feeds the whole network and does not spin off into
something too diffuse? How capture innovation at the edges?
– Distinction between community and network: Are these two terms
interchangeable?
○ Network seems value neutral: it’s the infrastructure. The community is
that body of people you’re trying to support through the network.
Leadership intervention on network can affect the community—but
levels of analysis addressing network and community are different. You
can map a network—its thickness, health—but measuring the strength
of a community is different.
○ Engagement that occurs in the network occurs with those people who
have overlapping, common interests. You have to find overlapping
interests in network to bridge connections (e.g., businesses want to
make money, I care about the environment: Where do we overlap?)
○ June Holley: Big N, little n networks
○ Nancy White, “Digital Habitats”: connection between online community
and networks (communitytechnologies.net)
○ There may not be a definitive difference between the two: networks
and communities
– Starting a Network and Monitoring Returns: Perhaps it’s possible to “start a
network”, but it’s very hard. The real question might not be “how do I start
it?”, it’s “how do I leverage it/interact within it so that I get the highest
possible returns?”
○ Starting a network can take place, and valuable: for us, the dots are
there, but the lines are not. People are there, but they don’t know each
other exist
– Measuring the benefit from networks, especially those that are more diffuse:
More bounded connections seem to be better: you can activate more readily
for impact and success. How do you track measure networks over time, when
measuring looser, more disperse networks?
 ○ Things you can do in one day to rally people together seem to be more
successful than networks as long, ongoing, continuous type of
connection. What’s the value of these more diffuse networks?
○ One funder’s advice on why strengthen your network: you should
strengthen your network infrastructure relationships so that you can
activate them when you need to
○ “Build your network before you need it”—Jeremiah Owyang (Forrester)
– Fluid participation in networks, in social media: How do you manage your
network when people are constantly moving in and out of the network? When
member pool is changing, are the people you mobilize for an event each time
the same, or is it a new group each time? And how do you keep track of these
different people?
○ e.g. when working with undergrads, because they’re constantly moving
in/out of college, how do we avoid building connections afresh every
time a new group moves in/out?
○ How optimize weak links in network?

Network Mapping: Observations and Questions

– Questions/Reflections on Farm Bill:

○ In what direction do the connections go? What does the location
outside of the boxes mean? Why are the nonprofits on the periphery?
Why are the corporation circles so small? What does size mean?
○ Map created through webcrawling and linkages on boards, online
searches
○ Limitations: Corporations likely have more influence than what’s
showed here; Congress not included
– Reflections/Questions on Environmental/Health Organization Mapping:
○ What does the varying thickness of the lines represent? Who are those
that are not connected? What does the direction mean? How are the
dots placed on the paper?
○ Done via survey: people asked to whom else connected
○ Result: Network mapping prompted discussion and action to
strengthen networks, increase information sharing, integrate
organizations more
– Reflections/Questions on intra-organization network within an office: Formal
relationships on paper not the same as those informal relationships:
○ Powerful person at the center, gatekeeper on the outside
– Reflections/Questions on Second Grade Class Network:
○ What do the arrows mean?
○ Early network mapping example—1950s/60s
Mapping Our Own Networks: Observations and Insights

– EDF – trying to assess ripple effect of partnerships. Want to do this ex. With
team on next retreat to explore how to get into new industries
– IS – want to explore different types of overlaps on the map. Have members
that are local orgs and national orgs with state and local affiliates. Want to
map access to government and access to knowledge and information.
– Several noticed hub and spoke structure
– Noticed that “I’m” at the center and want to figure out how to get out of the
center. Part of the problem is that network participants don’t often see each
other and aren’t technologically adept. So tendency is to go through the
center. How to make a bounded network an unbounded network?

Network Diagnosis—Observations, Learnings, Challenges

– IS: Answers to the diagnostic will be different if you’re taking someone from
the core of your network versus at the periphery
– SEEDS: We’re struggling with the beginnings of a social media network. Our
face-to-face network would score well, but our social media network scores
less well. To be successful, do you need to reach a certain number of people?
How do you create a safe haven online?
– Trust: we don’t have a lot of feedback on how trustworthy our site is seen as
being. We might have different kinds of participation: anonymous
contributors versus “big tent”—a shared space for contributions from funders,
organizers, volunteers. The kind of engagement in anonymous vs. “big tent”
capacities varies considerably
– When building networks, do we participate in it as an individual or as an
organization/spokesperson for organization/brand? (e.g. on social networking
sites such as Facebook)
– RARE: just because an organization has a network, it does not necessarily
mean there’s a lot of internal support to create and grow that network.
○ “These categories can help me communicate internally how we need
to work on all these things. Each one of these things is a whole body of
work.”
– Many challenges of working in an old, established network that’s been
structured in intentional way: Important people in the org. agree upon what
they’re doing, but as the technology changes, we also need to incorporate
new approaches. Even though the organization needs to adapt, people within
the org. are resistant. “We need to tap social networking. Taking an
organization that has not been functioning that way and getting people to try
this and see it as a good idea, especially as thought leaders are older and
close to retirement—that’s a huge challenge. I don’t know how I’m going to
get people to wake up to the new times and try new things.”
– Building learning networks is key: “There’s so much knowledge we need to
tap.”
 – Lot of people don’t have time for all the information online: blog, etc. It’s a
huge investment of time on their part and ours: how can we be strategic
about choosing and trying tools?
– Short and long terms success creating mini-hubs around tool use: Once
people are working together, we have a hard time monitoring and tracking
their activity. Hubs break off and interact with each other, not us. How do we
capture the result of the things that we catalyze in the mini-hubs through our
tools?

8 Principles for Using Social Media: Questions and Comments

– What metrics do we use to monitor how we’re doing?

○ EDF: the “5 Cs” still seem like an imperfect methodology
– How should people act within the network? How is this perceived?
○ Listenparticipate and engage
○ Important to listen before producing content , generating buzz, and
attempting to build a social network online
– How do we negotiate the challenges of “moving up the ladder”?
– How do we build trust—to share information, to be open and honest?
– Observation that social media expertise is often coming from lower down in
the hierarchy
○ Young internsmultigenerational teams
– Small organizations: have limited time or bandwidth. How can we begin to
tackle these issues and communications given this limited capacity?
○ 1) Priorities 2) small steps
○ Focus on what you need to achieve, who your audience is, and how to
use the tools to get at them: if it wont help you get at them, forget it
– Leader of organization may not be expert in social media and strategy
○ NPO Exec vs. intern/Gen Y
○ Rise of social media may present a key opportunity to give younger
people more leadership
– Where are we in the evolution of these technologies?
○ Shirky: “Tools don’t become interesting until they’re technically
boring.”
– What do we spend our time on and what’s helpful in the long run?
– Prediction about what the next tools are?
○ Social mobile: having your entourage in your pocket and being in touch
wherever you go
○ Cloud computing: having all your software and docs up in the internet
– It seems like by the time social media mainstream and popular, it’s on its way
out: is this true?
○ There’s a cycle: there are the early adopters, infatuation phase, media-
generated spike in activity, trough (decreased activity/use), and after
the trough, the tool raises to the peak of its productivity
Network Leadership and Mindset: Questions and Comments

– Questions focused around behavior: But can you have someone involved in
connecting people who doesn’t understand the content?
○ People who are too much of a content expert can have problems
connecting people
○ The “curse of content”: it’s rare to find a facilitator who can be good at
content AND has good process skills—it’s possible for someone to learn
content, but the process skills are more innate and behavioral
– Additional competencies of network leadership: weavers have to be
comfortable letting go of the outcome. Building relationship is the outcome,
what is then done with that outcome not your (i.e. weaver’s) business
○ Essential to combine aspirational piece with practical piece. MoveOn,
Obama campaign
– Influencers vs Facilitators: To come into certain networks, you may be able to
have someone who is a facilitator, but wasn’t an influencer in that space or
engaged. Can they be effective even if they weren’t an influencer?
– Additional competencies of network leadership: Opportunity-seeing and
curious

Network Weaver Checklist: Questions and Comments

– The necessary Skills and key challenges transcend issue area: “Everyone I’ve
talked to has been working on these issues in a different way.”
– The first characteristics listed on the checklist are more about personality
traits and characteristics of behavior, and as you move through it, it
becomes more about resources
○ “You’d be good at building a network if you ever had these kinds of
resources.” “There were things I didn’t think we could ever do because
we don’t have those resources”
– Take some issue with the checklist’s suggestion that you should “share
without expecting direct returns:” As someone trying to get network going, I
am expecting a return and communication
○ However, perhaps more appropriate to expect them to display network
concepts and behaviors—which are different and not necessarily fit in
category of “direct returns”
○ The idea of “Direct” return may be the problem: with social media
efforts, one cant always expect a direct benefit or return from the
investment that’s made
– Questions seemed geared to someone who’s already in a network—it asks
respondents to describe the things you do now, as opposed to traits they may
have exhibited in other scenarios
 ○ As opposed to: how you would approach a situation
– Answers are implicit: it’s overly y clear what’s right and what’s the wrong
answer
– Would be more useful if applied this tool to a team, not just a single person
– Results and returns: you can weave a lot of networks and ask a lot of
questions, but what about what you’re getting from it? Is it possible to
divorce that (i.e. returns from investment)?
– Is there a difference between a weaver and a leader?
○ A weaver within a network does not have to be a leader, a leader has
to be a weaver, at least to some extent
○ A Leader must also at least RECOGNIZE need to have a weaver
○ Philanthropy org Diana was working with: decided that they needed a
weaver on their team,as they did not have enough denseness within
the network
– “We’re always in networks—you always have opportunity to make leadership
intervention”
○ Ron Heifetz: it’s not a role or a title, it’s the responsibilities that you
can take on in personal and professional life that can move networks
along.

Open Space (modified)

– Everyone who comes is passionate and takes responsibility for creating

something out of that passion
– Whoever comes are the right people
– Whatever happens is the only thing that could have
– “Law of Two Feet”

Strategies for Strengthening Your Network, Debrief: Learnings and Actions

– Network growth requires systematic listening to the information in our space

and using it to follow up
○ “We have Google alerts but there’s so much more.”
– Learning: Importance of starting small: setting up structure for interaction,
using just a minimal piece, doing what can with existing resources, and
seeing what works and scaling back as begin to understand what’s successful
– Key action prior to network building: Defining what the purpose of our
network has to be
– Learning: We must build in a quarterly, internal assessment of the tech tools
we’re using. Build this review into our organizational work to get feedback
from state partners and internally on what’s going well and what’s not.
– Strive to not be too attached to any one thing, but constantly review the tools
Strategies for Strengthening Your Network, Debrief: Challenges

– Making the time

– Need to overcome barriers within EDF: how do we identify how to start and
where our internal staff can start listening?
– Defining what network we’re talking about: there’s an Innovation network and
member network and dissemination network: What’s the overlap and how
does the activity look different in each of these spaces? How do we interact
with each of those?
– How do we have continuous engagement?
– Creating infrastructure for and investing in serendipity: how does serendipity
lead to dollars?
– Tracking decentralized activity
– Managing the information overload

Peer Learning: Breakout Topics for Small Group Discussion

– Fundraising
– Successful business models for network
– Tracking decentralized activity and success: understanding what’s working
and not, and how to use successes to drive more change
– Designing an event series that can lead to network building
– Starting a network
– Learning more about Packard’s and Monitor’s work on networks: how the
workshop came about, what the learnings have been

Starting a Network: Peer Learning Breakout Group

– Should it be a response to a need (top down) or is it organically growing

(bottom up) and you just need to pull the pieces together? Can you start a
network top-down?
○ Bottom up networks seems to start much better (e.g. Facebook)
○ There can be a need for a network, but people (within an organization)
are pressed for time, and they often can’t prioritize its development
○ Many difficulties convincing people to participate, versus just creating
a platform and having them voluntarily join
– Active participation vs passive participation: how desirable are they?
– How do we move from a listserve to an online centralized platform and
community?
○ Reproductive Health Technologies: “9 out of 10 times, I’m the one
who’s posting”
○ Whenever we come up with new idea, have to consider how it’s
different from listserve: what’s the value add? There’s a lot of
 redundancy and oftentimes we don’t find added benefit in going
beyond d a listserve
– What’s the benefit of doing something different than what we’re doing now?
– How do you get people to go somewhere? (i.e. to visit a website or blog,
versus passively receiving an email)
– Process for Social Media at SEEDS:online via blog, LinkedIn, Facebook,
Twitter: everyone in the organization’s got their hand in pieces, lots of
different staff contributing to these venues
– Hacking is a problem: have had people hack into system (especially as
advocacy group, and especially when involved with controversial issues)
– Successful design: People like things that are pretty, that look easy, that are
familiar
○ “Our internal demographic is a little technophobic.”
– Want to establish a place where people can share ideas and content: low-key
group interaction with little maintenance
○ Blog and podcasts: “just icing on the cake for our organization”
– How do you maintain accountability for online work?
○ Much less accountability for online activity than phone interactions: On
a call or during a meeting, it’s easy to make sure that someone is
there, to check in on what they’re doing, and ensure that they are
focusing on a task. When responsible for working online, posting,
checking Twitter, etc, there’s less accountability for online work and
less checking in that goes on
○ Important to schedule time dedicated to online work—the same way
you’d schedule a meeting, a phone call
– Survey conducted of members indicated that what people interested in (in
terms of online capabilities): posting documents and posting announcements
– If people don’t go to these online tools or don’t read them: is it an indication
they don’t need or want what you’re offering?
○ “Sometimes people just want the option: They want to feel invited to it
even if they don’t want to go.”
○ “Create your network before you need it”: when something happens, a
network is an important way to reach that group of people
○ Have an infrastructure people know they can draw on—that aren’t
necessarily linked to particular individuals

Breakout Group: Funding

– Necessary to come up with something to help people to connect to your

organization or cause: make it fun—then when you have a fundraising event,
they’ll be more responsive

Breakout Group: Packard

 – Interest and appeal to have these conversations around networking: ongoing
learning

Breakout Group: Measurement and tracking decentralized efforts

– Order of importance: First encouraging it, second tracking it

– Encouraging it: might start by calling people and asking for anecdotes; doing
a survey
○ Rewarding those who contribute: having conferences for people who
are connecting, doing decentralized work; have them be brought in to
present on their activity and have conference around it
– Even in decentralized Wiki world, people still like to have credit

Breakout Group: Network building

– Carrot Mobs: get together and reward companies for good behavior
– Need for star power: very helpful to get celebrities involved

Something Essential I’m Taking Away from Today’s Training is…

– Network mapping: really excited about it and will definitely use as a tool
– Reassurance we’re not the only ones trying to find our way: “As much as I
don’t know, there are a lot of other people that don’t know either.”
– Learned about del.icio.us tags
– Suggestion: a deep dive on a case study or two would be really helpful