The Karass and the Granfalloon
by Paul Miller
Just spotted this piece by Steven Johnson (author of Emergence) about software that you can use to develop social network maps of organisations. It basically uses email data to work out who emails who and how often.
"In his classic novel Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut explains how the world is divided into two types of social organizations: the karass and the granfalloon..."
Read on here.
eerr, but doesn't that mean that the e junk mailer gets his stakes raised unfairly?
Tony Quinlan
Great for understanding for organisation's informal structures - and then using them to make sure that the crucial "hub" individuals are not part of any redundancy programmes, therefore isolating their connected colleagues. And also useful for seeing the true influencers/sneezers in terms of communications - see Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point and Seth Godin's Ideavirus books.