Network Mapping: Leveraging Your Influence

In the November, 2016, issue of Change the World, I talked about using the concept of adaptive networks as an alternative way to recognize and leverage your influence in times when you are feeling stuck and constrained. The focus was on three characteristics that define the adaptive capacity of a network. Adaptive networks are sensitive: They see and share information and data that has meaning across the network. Adaptive networks are responsive: They allow for and support individual action that is coherent with and contributes to fitness of the greater network. Adaptive Networks are robust: They are stable across the shared identity of the network.

Whatever your role is as an employee, colleague, family member, or community member, you are a member of multiple networks that are entangled with each other and with networks that extend beyond your own reach. The networks of people, ideas, and customers we live in are so massively entangled that we often don’t realize that we are connected to others in ways that can wield influence and action locally, and on a larger scale.

How can you leverage your influence as a member of a network, if you can’t see who or what comprises that network and how those parts of the network are connected? Is your network sensitive, responsive, or robust enough? How can you know, and are there ways you can strengthen your network if you want to increase its adaptability? A number of people have documented and categorized the processes for building a network map. The basic processes are fairly straightforward.

This month’s Change the World offers a Network Mapping Guide that uses commonly-accepted mapping strategies to understand your network. The resulting map, however, allows you to look more deeply into the patterns of interaction and decision making that shape the patterns of your network. It opens insights that can increase your ability to leverage adaptive capacity in your highly interconnected and interdependent world. This Network Mapping Guide helps you look beyond the surface to see and understand the conditions that shape the patterns in your world.

Using a cycle of Adaptive Action, the tool guides you through a series of questions and decisions that can inform your next wise action. Try it and let us know how it works!

Royce