Stages in making sense of a organizational network analysis
I’ve been working on a chocolate project — mapping a network of chocolate experts with Shawn Callahan of Anecdote. After I emailed off the first set of charts from the organizational network analysis, I was on the phone with the Shawn and the client. I sent a note to my colleague, Bruce Hoppe after the call, summarizing the stages of making sense of an ONA that were experienced by the client:
- He was first overwhelmed by how confusing the maps were
- Decided that there were no surprises
- Had a number of “aha”s !
I meant to blog this last week, as it represents the classic and stages that people go through in the process of looking at maps and becoming engaged with the data.
I noticed this morning that Shawn has blogged the phenomenon as well. It’s great working with Shawn and his colleague Mark Schenk. I’m looking forward to seeing Shawn in person in Boston next week for his Narrative Techniques for Business workshop.
1a very public sociologist
wrote on 28 March 2007 at 6:29
Could we say the response to network maps is a general sociological law (mediated by history, context, habitus, etc.)?
2Victoria G. Axelrod
wrote on 30 March 2007 at 9:54
Hi Patti,
I have been using http://www.touchgraph.com with clients so they can see their url network map. If you put “chocolate” in the search box at touchgraph you get a pretty good network map.
Worth a try and thanks for a super idea.
Victoria
3Nancy White
wrote on 17 May 2007 at 10:56
Hey! I’ve told Shawn I’m totally jealous about this project. Imagine, getting in touch with all those CHOCOLATE people.
sigh…
choconancy
(aka Nancy)