CRA Inc

30 Oct 02 @ 5:42 pm

Communication Networks

The study of communication networks has grown dramatically since Everett Rogers first published his seminal work Diffusion of Innovations in 1962. The theory (very well established by both popular and academic research) posits that in any organization, all individuals are not created equal when it comes to the frequency and breadth of their communication. Indeed, the modern corporation is filled with a variety of communication network “types,” including (in our parlance):

- Most of us, who communicate with average frequency to an average number of people

- Isolates, solitary recluses who communicate infrequently if at all

- Bridges, who, although they don’t communicate with more frequency than others tend to have key relationships with people from a variety of groups or communities (hence they act as a “bridge” between those groups), and

- Stars, who communicate and maintain relationships with a significantly greater number of people than does the average person.

For practitioners and leaders these differences are important. Try to move your message through isolates, and it goes nowhere. Try to move your message through stars, and it spreads like wildfire. Try to credibly introduce your message to a new group without a bridge, and you’ll never get through the door.

The principles of communication networks are the principles upon which all effective grass-roots campaigns (and all effective stakeholder management approaches) rest, and they’re wonderfully summarized in a 1999 New Yorker article by Malcom Gladwell, Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg. We recommend the article to any internal communication professional, change management professional, or leader of people.

You can read the article here …

posted in category(s): Theory Points