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In a way, the Marcom Director of 1995 I described at the beginning
of this article certainly got that feeling that sitting up there
at the top-floor of our building was no longer sufficient if he
wanted to have things and people under total control. I am sure
that - even subconsciously - he felt that freedom was at work
down there and that there wasn't much he could do to stop it,
and also because at the end of the day, the entire organisation
benefited from the insidious freedom of informal networks.
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Figure 9: Cross fertilisation of
the factors for informal networks development[34]
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The end-result of the cross-fertilisation of all the reasons
for the development of informal networks is viable and profitable
because of the link between its members[35].
Those networks are real, they were not produced by obscure technocrats
hiding behind their organisation charts. They were made willingly
by real people based on knowledge and competence. And I think
that this is why organisation charts have become so abstract and
useless; it’s because they are completely useless when it comes
to identifying the right human beings who can make projects happen.
The fact is that the real decision-maker is seldom he who is identified
as such in the organisation chart (or at any rate, he may not
be alone).
Informal networks are, conversely, based upon the trust between
people; as a matter of fact, business has always been based on
trust. And trust is stronger than force. The aims of such networks
are transparent and all network members freely agree to share
these aims when they join a network. The vision is clear to all.
Such networks are created, live and die naturally and spontaneously.
This very spontaneity is the reason why they also are dynamic
and result-oriented. They are more efficient than top-down organisations
because they are based on their member’s skills, not status.
Hierarchical organisations do not always recognize competences[36], which in its turn generates feelings of injustice and
therefore, yet more suspicion towards Authority. Informal networks
are cross-functional, they ignore organisational silos. But informal
networks are change agents and therefore, they often challenge
the establishment. In a manner of speaking, one may say that impertinence
is one of their characteristics. There
we are, informal networks are here to stay and develop and we
may also say that they are a great means of circumventing traditional
organisational issues with regards to change management. However,
I would like to draw your attention to some of their drawbacks
too, and this is what I
have determined to do in the following chapter.
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