Connecting Organizational Silos: Taking Knowledge Flow Management to the Next Level with Social Media

HANDLING THE DYNAMIC ORGANIZATION

Organizations are getting more and more dynamic in a lot of ways. For one, structures of many organizations are changing more frequently. This might be due to product cycles becoming shorter, which lead to rearrangements of different parts of the organizations around those new products or solutions. Another reason can be frequent management changes. Some companies change their management almost as quickly as German soccer clubs change their coaches, believing that every stretch of low performance that lasts longer than the board would like means that it is time to bring in new ideas with new management. Every new manager brings in new ideas and that might lead to changes in the way the organization is structured.

Other reasons for more dynamic businesses are mergers and acquisitions. They extend the organization and also lead to combining some parts and splitting others. Outsourcing, near-sourcing, and extended partnering to various degrees create new ties and might change old relationships. All of those changes affect the way that staff in an organization interact with each other. In a lot of cases the changes mean change in proximity. Teams or team members get moved around and, let’s face it, in some cases it does not make a big difference if one goes to a different floor or a different country. Out of sight, out of mind, as the saying goes. I once performed a social network analysis with a department moving within the same city from one building ...