Personal allegiances built over years and across the org chart give a leader informal channels that surface problems early and colleagues who will back their plans when formal authority is not enough.
Borderline: whether this move is justified depends on the situation, and only the person in it can judge.
An example
Fifteen years after coming up through the plants, the vice president of manufacturing at a food manufacturer had backed the careers of most of its current plant managers and maintenance leads, and they had backed his. When he proposed a forty-million-dollar automation program for the two oldest bakeries, the finance team's model showed a payback of six years and the chief financial officer was skeptical. The plant managers sent him the downtime logs they had never put into the monthly reports, which showed that the oldest line lost a shift a week to manual changeovers. Three of them came to the capital committee to describe the changeovers in person. The program was approved in two phases, with the first bakery's results as the gate for the second.
Why it works
Working with the network brings its assets: channels that surface problems faster than formal reporting, the retention of the people anchored to its central figures, and backing for the decision. Day-to-day friction falls because meetings move faster when members close ranks. Crossing or bypassing the network is costly: central figures can leave and take loyal staff with them, and the informal channel goes silent. Genuine centrality, allegiances that predate the current structure, tolerance for informal power, and no outside pressure for rapid formalization give it force. It pays over years, and most in decisions where formal authority is contested or thin.
The thinking behind it
Mark Granovetter Granovetter's The Strength of Weak Ties (1973) shows that acquaintances bridging separate groups carry new information across a network. A network built across plants and functions over many years is full of such bridges, which is why it surfaces problems, such as downtime that never reached the monthly report, faster than formal reporting does.
Jeffrey Pfeffer Pfeffer's Power in Organizations (1981) locates power in centrality in networks of dependence as well as formal position. A leader at the center of a network of mutual sponsorship holds influence the org chart does not show, most useful when formal authority is contested or thin. The same centrality is why the network's central figures can become a veto if the relationships are used to apply pressure.
Robert B. Cialdini Cialdini's Influence (1984) describes reciprocity: people feel obliged to repay what others give them. Sponsorship given over years, such as promotions, stretch work, and cover for mistakes that were not someone's fault, creates obligations that come back as information and support when the sponsor needs them.
When it fits
Networks of this kind suit a leader with long tenure who has a real record of sponsoring people across functions and sites, in a company where informal channels carry information the formal ones miss. It is a long-horizon investment: it cannot be built for a decision next quarter, and it is most useful when formal authority alone cannot carry a decision.
How to use it well
Invest in people long before you need them.
- Sponsor people across reporting lines: promotions, stretch assignments, cover when something goes wrong that was not their fault.
- Keep the channels two-way: listen to what they tell you, and act on problems they raise.
- When you need support, bring the network the case and ask what they know that would strengthen it.
- Use the network to bring evidence into formal forums. Its value is the information and the credible voices it adds.
Make sure the relationships survive your own departure: sponsor successors and connect people to each other, so the network does not depend on you alone.
What it costs and where it backfires
Networks look like cliques to those outside them, and newcomers with better numbers but no history can feel shut out, which costs you talent. Over-reliance on informal channels can leave formal reporting weak. Once the network becomes a veto, through warnings that key people will walk out if a decision goes against you or through blocking formalization to protect your power, relationships have turned into hostage-taking.
When it is used on you
Assume a network is at work when the same names appear as informal approvers on unrelated decisions regardless of reporting lines, and any move to formalize their area brings warnings that people will follow them out. Avoid a direct attack, which tends to set off the departures. Build a parallel network over time, develop successors around the central figure, and formalize when accountability matters more than comfort, as in a crisis.