As the first quarter of 2017 winds down, we at BeST headquarters sat down to review insights from more than 15 games we carried out in the last few months. Interestingly, we found many recurring themes.
One of these insights can be extracted from our social interactions analysis maps: there is a fundamental difference between individuals who function as central players and those who function as leaders of crisis management processes.
Our social network analysis (SNA) investigates social structures through the use of networks and graph theories. Our graphs analyze the overarching structures in terms of players or groups of players and the ties, edges, or links that connect them.
During or after games, we are often asked to point out leadership themes and to determine whether the expected leaders stepped up to the challenge or if someone else took control of the crisis management process.
It is important to point out that leadership is assessed not by the number of different players or interactions a certain individual deals with, but by the types of decisions made and the accountability measures subsequently taken by a certain individual.
As opposed to leadership, centrality means determining which players are essential to the process, even if they are not expected to make critical decisions. These are determined by comparing organizations’ expected processes to real time behaviors and aiming to quantify the “importance” or “influence” of a particular player by use of a number of measurements which assess centrality.
As we learn more about these two important factors of SNA, we have decided to address both issues by enabling our users to input their insights into two new types of maps titled leadership and centrality. This allows BeST users to see which employees in their organizations function as the central nodes of the crisis management apparatuses and which employees function as the real and expected leaders of the crisis management process.
- Are you the “leader” or are you “central” in your organization crisis management plan?
- Will the results of a crisis management process of an actual crisis be different than your crisis management plan?
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