Strategic Connections: Using Social Networks to Restructure the it Department at Mwh (a)

Abstract

In this first in a series of cases on organizational network analysis (ONA), Vic Gulas, the new head of IT at the engineering consulting firm MWH Consulting, is charged with turning a geographically organized department into one organized by function. He knows that the success of the reorganization will depend on effective collaboration, but he cannot get a sense of what collaborative relationships do and do not exist by looking at a formal organizational chart. Instead, Gulas uses ONA, a method for mapping relationships among people in a group. In the ONA results, Gulas sees a group still fragmented by geography and constrained by hierarchy and other gaps in connectivity. After studying the highly detailed assessment of working relationships within the IT department, Gulas must decide in the A case what steps he can take to align the department's network with its business objectives.

Excerpt

UVA-S-0112

Rev. Sept. 18, 2009

Strategic Connections: USING SOCIAL NETWORKS

TO RESTRUCTURE THE IT DEPARTMENT AT MWH (A)

Vic Gulas caught himself, for what felt like the 10th time that day, staring at the poster board tacked on his office wall. On it were two organizational charts—old and new—for the IT department at MWH (see Exhibit 1). Gulas, a 20-year veteran of the engineering consulting firm, had recently been named head of IT—an entirely new role for him. His charge: to transform the department. What had been a geographically organized unit with sites in the United States, Europe, and Asia, would become a functionally organized global department that had to deliver superior, standardized service to internal and external customers—and at much lower cost.

The transformation was well under way. As the chart on the wall illustrated, the new organization, called iNet, had a new structure, which was organized around three functional areas; IT staffers were getting a feel for their new reporting relationships and new expectations. But the CEO wanted iNet fully up and running by 2004, which was just a few months away, and Gulas was worried. He knew that restructuring the IT department involved much more than moving boxes around on a chart. The key to the success of this new global department, which comprised 185 people in 27 offices in 11 countries, would be collaboration. But Gulas had a sense that many of the people who would now be expected to work together seamlessly had never even exchanged e-mails, let alone met in person. In the old organization, people who managed, say, servers in the Denver office would not have coordinated with their counterparts in Christchurch, New Zealand. Gulas himself, even after two decades at MWH, was not familiar with that many people in offices outside the United States, especially below the senior manager level. He could come up with a list of the connections between people and groups that iNet would require to deliver on its mission. But how could Gulas find out what kind of links did and did not exist already among IT employees? And how could he help people in iNet become more effectively connected to fulfill the new organization's goals? The chart he kept staring at couldn't answer those questions.

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Keywords: Social networks, organizational networks, reorganization, organizational change, change management, leadership, strategic alignment