Doing an ONA for your Organisation

Decide the Objectives of the study

Determine what you want to learn as a result of conducting a network analysis. Do
you want to identify influencers in order to engage them in change initiatives? Do you
want to understand how information flows through the organization? Do you want to
create a plan to help new employees build their networks during the on-boarding
process? Do you want to look at a succession planning strategy or do you want to
identify hi potential employees? Organizations also use the network analysis to
study inclusion and Organisation culture. While a study can show all these, it is
better to decide what is most important for you so that the analysis can be specific
and in-depth.

Decide the number of people for the study

Based on the objectives, decide the boundary or the number of people who will
participate in the survey/study. Remember as we are mapping the relationship
networks that extend beyond reporting relationships, we need to carefully decide
who all need to part of the survey. For example, if we want to understand who are
the top 30 influencers in middle level in the organisation, we should be involving the
direct reportees of this band, their peers and their mangers and the number might be
300 or more.

Plan How to collect data and share the insights

Think through how you’re going to invite people to participate in the survey. What
would you share as the objective of the survey? Think through how you would share
and act on the data. Who all will get what kind of insights? It might be difficult and not
advisable to share the entire insights to everyone who participated in the study. At
the same, they also would like to know results of a survey/study that they
participated.

Interpret the insights Accurately

If someone has few connections, it does not mean that the person is anti-social,
unliked, or incompetent. Be sure to stress this since people can misinterpret the
results. Most often, people with few connections have recently joined the team, work
in another location or functional area, have a job that doesn’t require interaction etc.
So it is important to understand the context and look at the data from that context.