Use Value Network maps to understand how your organization works from the bottom up

We usually look at organizational networks at three levels. The first (described as a knowledge factory) is at a strategic level, built on the high-level inventory of an organization’s intangible capital. Today, I’ll talk about the next takes the perspective of the knowledge factory down one more level of detail (third perspective, personal networks comes tomorrow).

This perspective looks at the roles people play in your organization. This is the Value Network methodology* described by Verna Allee in The Future of Knowledge.

This approach involves mapping a network where a specific task or process occurs. The nodes in this network are “roles.” A role speaks to the specific function that a person is playing. This is not their title on an org chart—it is usually more descriptive—such as advisor, buyer, designer, marketer, mentor, partner, problem solver. It is common for a person to serve in more than one role.

Once you identify the roles, then all the different “exchanges” between roles are catalogued and mapped. An effort is made to identify both tangible and intangible exchanges. Delivery of a product, document or money is a tangible exchange. An intangible exchange is something like the sharing of knowledge, an introduction to someone else or personal support. Generally, the tangible exchanges are more formal. The intangible, while less structured, can be critical in creating trust and facilitating better communication in an organization.

This is an excerpt of a Value Network map. It was developed to improve the process for handling complex technology repairs at a large utility company. The excerpt shows the sequence of activity that takes over once a problem has been reported and documented. Solid arrows show tangible exchanges and dotted line arrows show intangible exchanges. The first step is for the Service Coordinator to send the Field Technician a dispatch ticket (tangible) and suggestions on the potential solution (intangible) based on information the coordinator has obtained from the customer. The Senior Tech Advisor also gets a copy of the dispatch ticket (tangible) and provides advisory (tangible) to the Field Tech and the Service Coordinator. The Field Tech provides the service (tangible) to the Customer Tech Manager. If all goes well, the Customer Tech Manager and the Service Coordinator exchange completion documentation and the process ends. If not, the field tech informs the field manager that an escalation may be necessary and a new phase of the process kicks in.

The full version of this map includes upfront agreements as to customer expectations and commitments on service level agreements. There is also a set of procedures for escalating problems that cannot be resolved through the initial work of the field tech. The analysis found a number of places in the process where responsibility shifted from one person to another but the person receiving the hand-off wasn’t getting full information. Communication flows for these hand-offs was improved. The map also graphically showed that initial service level negotiations were handled without input from the field which often led to agreements that did not work well in reality. Small work groups were able to make dramatic progress in the span of just a few weeks.

The power of this approach is that the map is created by the people that do the work that is being mapped. It helps them think through what actually happens in their everyday work—and how to improve it. Unlike pure process maps, this approach also captures the critical exchanges of information and assistance, the human-centric intangible exchanges that help make the system work. The concept of mapping intangible exchanges helps, we believe, to make sense of the multiplicity of goals and benefits that network participants have in a business setting. It also empowers the people doing the work to improve it themselves. This kind of bottom-up thinking is critical to the optimization of the knowledge enterprise.

We also like Value Networks as a case study for operationalization of knowledge and its 21st century business model. From its beginnings in the mid-1990s, the methodology has been developed into both an open source and commercial offering. There is also a software package that facilitates the analysis and visualization of the network maps. Rather than trying to keep the methodology as a proprietary offering, the group is maximizing its reach and impact by empowering people on the line inside organizations to model and optimize their own work.

Adapted from Intangible Capital: Putting Knowledge to Work in the 21st Century Organization by Mary Adams and Michael Oleksak.

*A principal of our firm, Mary Adams, is an Advanced Practitioner and
Facilitator of the Value Net Works methodology and is currently working
on several articles about our firm’s work with Value Net Works.