Informal influencers are the people colleagues go to when they need to understand something or get it right. At BridgeLayer we find them with organizational network analysis in four steps: leaders predict who they are, we map who people actually go to for information or help, we match the right people to the change, and we ask what is in their way.
Step 1: Predict
Wherever we can, we start by asking each leader, separately, which five or six people information actually flows through. We record the answers before anyone is surveyed.
Leaders are often wrong, and that is the point. In one leadership team, an employee whose role looked redundant on paper carried 90% of the connections between the product and sales teams. Her name was on a restructuring list, and it would almost certainly have been missing from every leader's prediction.
The people leaders miss and the places where they disagree with each other are some of the most useful findings in the work. When McKinsey compared store managers' lists with what employees reported, the managers had overlooked almost two thirds of the influential employees their colleagues named. We explain how to run this in Before You Measure Anything, Ask Your Executives to Predict the Results.
Step 2: Map who people go to for information or help
Our core question asks people who they go to as a good source of information or help.
We word it this way on purpose. Ask who people collaborate with, and you get a mix of who they work with, who they like and who they feel they should mention, including their manager. Seeking information is a deliberate act. People go to someone because they trust that person's judgment and the cost of a bad answer is real. Krackhardt and Hanson showed that advice, trust with sensitive information and everyday communication form separate networks, often with different people at the center.
Two follow ups make the map more useful. We ask what kind of help people seek from each person, such as technical expertise, decisions or strategy, because someone can be central for one and invisible for another. We also ask whether people leave feeling energized, an idea that comes from Cross, Baker and Parker's research on energy in networks. The map then shows who others depend on, for what, and whether those people leave colleagues better off. A separate question asks who people need more access to, which shows where the network falls short of what the work requires.
Tell people why you are asking and who will see the results. Keep individual names with a small group and share patterns more widely.
Step 3: Match the person to the change
We look for two roles:
Anchors hold things together. They are densely connected within a function, location or leadership layer, and people go to them for clarity.
Translators connect what would otherwise stay separate. They sit between functions, locations or levels and carry intent across them.
A change inside one function needs that function's Anchors. A reorganization, an integration or a new operating model needs Translators. Battilana and Casciaro's study of 68 change initiatives in the UK's National Health Service found that change agents who bridged disconnected groups did better with changes that broke from current practice.
Where someone stands matters as much as where they sit. In one client network, three VP-level leaders scored low on whether the organization was working toward shared goals, and the clusters around them scored low too. Two teams elsewhere scored well, and the person anchoring them was a mid-level individual contributor with wide reach across teams. We call this pattern strategic alignment contagion: the people you go to for information shape how you see the organization, across team lines. A widely sought-out skeptic can shape buy-in as much as a formal leader can, so we look for them early, whatever their title.
Before choosing anyone, check their load. Cross, Rebele and Grant found that 20 to 35% of the collaborations that add the most value come from 3 to 5% of employees, and those people report the lowest engagement and career satisfaction. An Anchor who leaves people drained is a risk before they are a lever. More in Why the Most Connected Person in Your Organization Might Be Your Biggest Risk.
Step 4: Clear the way
Once you know who they are, ask what is getting in their way. The access question from Step 2 often points to the answer. Our survey and interviews also look at three conditions:
Clarity: they know what the change means for their own work.
Room to decide: they have the freedom to adjust how they work.
Alignment: their goals line up with where the plan is heading.
When one of these is missing, fixing it usually does more than handing them a message to carry.
Common questions
Is the most connected person always the right one to choose?
No. They may already be stretched, they may leave people drained, they may be skeptical of the change, or they may be connected to the wrong groups for what you are changing.
Can you find them without a survey?
Partly. Leadership predictions and a handful of interviews give you a starting list. A short confidential survey is the more reliable way to see who people rely on, especially in the parts of the organization leaders see least.
At BridgeLayer, this is where our work starts: showing a leadership team the people its plans depend on and what they need to deliver. If a change you are planning runs through people you have not yet named, we are easy to talk to. More on our approach is on our network analysis page.
