Works
- Informal Networks: The Company Behind the Chart, Harvard Business Review (with Jeffrey R. Hanson), 1993
In Tactics of Organizational Politics
Ideas
Advice, trust, and communication networks. This Harvard Business Review article argues that much of the real work of companies happens through informal networks that cut across the formal chart. The authors map three of them, the advice network (who goes to whom for technical help), the trust network, and the communication network, by surveying employees, and show that the advice hubs and trusted people often differ from those the chart would suggest.
What it explains
Krackhardt explains how to find the people whose views others actually rely on, which the organization chart does not show. Briefing those advice hubs is a more reliable way to spread a case than relying on formal reporting lines.
Tactics that draw on David Krackhardt (1)
In Thinking Tools
Known for
A Carnegie Mellon professor of organizations who showed managers how to map the advice, trust, and communication networks behind the formal chart, and wrote the KrackPlot network software.