Engaging the shadow networks that can make or break change
This is the first of three articles looking at some of the lesser understood or appreciated reasons that change fails in many organisations. I’m not talking about the lack of a designated project manager or the need for massively increased levels of communication – I hope that these are a given for any leadership team managing change – instead I mean the more nuanced, dare I say, psychological elements.
Here I am going to consider the role of shadow networks in enabling or resisting change – and why now, more than ever, leaders are in danger of losing sight of them.
When managing organisational change, the tendency is to focus on defining systemic elements – roles, tasks, structures, processes. There are a million books that lay out the 5, 7, 10 critical steps to follow. But once you start the journey in a systemic mindset, it’s very hard to activate your radar to the human consideration. Or at least, when you do, it tends to be within a systemic framework – ‘people respond to certainty, so let’s do an org chart’!
But people exist within a network outside of these defined structures – their relationships leak outside the confines of their manager, direct reports, department and client team. They include peer groups, colleagues from previous work teams, as well as their in-organisation social network. Their perception of the organisation is influenced far more by this shadow network than those command-and-control structures enforced from above.
So you can communicate your change within the channels of the official structure, hold Q&A sessions or run an anonymous survey and you’ll never see the change as perceived by the shadow network. And working remotely, as many of us now are, only adds to this blindness.
Why is this? As leaders one of our most important soft skills is peripheral observation. The ability to ‘see’ the mood in a room, the dynamics at play, and tune into the intuition that something is shifting or not. It’s described as being able to ‘instinctively pick up on the smell’ of an organisation. And even if you do have it, the move to online working has severely limited the ability to deploy this vital skill – Zoom, Teams and the like compartmentalise everyone into single boxes presenting an organisation of distinct individuals instead of the several groups that represent the shadow network. Plus as Jeremy Bailenson, Professor of Communication at Stanford University, notes: “It’s a Catch-22 where you’re getting smothered with non-verbal data, but none of that data is diagnostic”[i], meaning that our peripheral observation is actually being confused by false data – making eye contact on Zoom is actually the chance occurrence of one person looking directly at the camera when the other is looking at their screen.
Let me give you an example of the importance of shadow networks. As an organisation’s leader, you want to merge two departments. You do your due diligence, involve those departments in working sessions, define new processes and tasks, explain why it will be good for the organisation as a whole. You even co-create a pithy new value statement. But the change doesn’t land, and good people leave. What did you miss?
Had the Q&As and department meetings been held in person and not on Zoom and you had utilised your peripheral observation, you may have picked up on the group in the corner – a group made up of a seemingly unconnected mix of seniorities and disciplines. A group who rolled their eyes and muttered to each other throughout, who didn’t engage, and who left unconvinced and resistant to change.
You’d then have known to engage with them, to understand how their personal and group needs weren’t being met in the new approach. If you did it right, and they felt truly heard and able to contribute, you may even have created change advocates, those with the personal networks and influence to positively impact the shadow conversations that can make change happen rather than stop dead in its tracks.
So, as a leader don’t make the mistake of presuming that the organisation you design, is the same one that is experienced by your people. Turn on your peripheral observation, take note of the shadow networks in your organisation and turn them into the advocates you need to make change successful.
[i] https://news.microsoft.com/innovation-stories/microsoft-teams-together-mode/
