What if everything we thought about how organizations function was wrong? For decades, businesses have been structured around hierarchies and rigid processes, assuming this was the best way to manage talent, collaboration, and leadership. But what if the real key to high performance and better talent acquisition lies not in org charts but in networks? The emerging disciple of Network Science has quietly been reshaping everything from social media to healthcare, so what happens when we apply it to how we work, lead, and hire?
Organizations are complex systems, yet most companies are still managed using outdated, linear models. What if network science, a discipline that has revolutionized everything from the internet to disease control, could also transform the way we think about leadership, collaboration, and hiring
So, how do networks really shape the way organizations function, and could a deeper understanding of them change how we hire, engage, and retain talent?
My guest this week is Jeffrey Beeson, a leadership strategist and expert in organizational networks. Jeffrey’s work focuses on how businesses can optimize collaboration, unlock hidden influencers, and rethink traditional hierarchies using the principles of network science. We discuss how understanding an organization’s internal networks can improve hiring decisions, enhance onboarding, and increase retention by fostering stronger workplace connections.
In the interview, we discuss:
• What is network science, and how does it apply to business?
• How all complex systems are based on network patterns and laws
• Three degrees of influence
• How emotions travel through networks
• The best-connected individuals have the most influence.
• Identifying influencers
• Retention, onboarding, and talent management
• The application of network science to talent acquisition
• Applying network solutions to network problems
• The future of work
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Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
What if everything we thought about how organizations function was wrong? For decades, businesses have been structured around hierarchies and rigid processes, assuming this was the best way to manage talent, collaboration and leadership. But what if the real key to high performance and better talent acquisition lies not in org charts, but in networks? The emerging discipline of network science has been quietly reshaping everything from social media to healthcare. So what happens when we apply it to how we work, lead and hire? Support for this podcast comes from Workable. Workable is the all in one hiring platform that empowers companies of all sizes to attract, evaluate and hire top talent. Effortlessly trusted by over 30,000 companies worldwide, Workable has facilitated over 1.5 million hires, streamlining recruitment with powerful automation and AI driven insights. Hire smarter, faster and with confidence. Learn more at workable.com.
Matt Alder [00:01:26]:
Hi there. Welcome to episode 682 of Recruiting Future with me, Matt Alder. Organizations are complex systems, yet most companies are still managed using outdated linear models. What if network science, a discipline that’s revolutionized everything from the Internet to disease control, could also transform the way we think about leadership, collaboration and hiring? So how do networks really shape the way that organizations function? And could a deeper understanding of them change how we hire, engage and retain talent? My guest this week is Jeffrey Beeson, a leadership strategist and expert in organizational networks. Jeffrey’s work focuses on how businesses can optimize collaboration, unlock hidden influences, and rethink traditional hierarchies. Using the principles of network science, we discuss how understanding an organization’s internal networks can improve hiring decisions, enhance onboarding, and increase retention by fostering stronger workplace connections. Hi Jeffrey and welcome to the podcast.
Jeffrey Beeson [00:02:38]:
Well, thank you. Nice to be here.
Matt Alder [00:02:40]:
A pleasure to have you on the show Please could you introduce yourself and tell us what you do?
Jeffrey Beeson [00:02:46]:
Be more than glad to do so. I have founded an enabling company and that was founded in 2014 and we focus on enabling organizations to really reach optimal collaboration inside of the organizations. And I come from a background of strategy consulting and leadership development. Sort of unique mix that brings these together and what I’ve done in the last few years is really focus on the how networks can really affect the performance of an organization.
Matt Alder [00:03:23]:
Cool. Definitely something to dive into and find out more about. So tell us a little bit about What your organization, a bit more about what your organization does and then tell us what you mean by networks.
Jeffrey Beeson [00:03:34]:
Be happy to do so. So our organization works with other businesses and organizations. And what we do is we help them to understand how collaboration works, how instructions have their organization and how it can be optimized. And we use all sorts of different kinds of tools to do that. For instance, network analysis to look at how people are connected inside an organization, and various instruments to, to enhance and improve those, those networks. So that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s what we do. It’s, and it has a broad range of, of, of applications from talent management to, to innovation.
Matt Alder [00:04:26]:
Talk to us a little bit about network science. You know, what is it and how did it originate?
Jeffrey Beeson [00:04:32]:
Okay, so network science is a, is a new science. It actually was only recognized as an official science in 2005, even though it goes much, much further back. It only really came into its own as computational power became available. It’s really beginning to transform our world in the short period that it’s been in existence, which is less than 20 years. It is a science that takes a look at, at how things are connected with each other. And it turns out that, you know, networks are just about everywhere in the telecommunication systems that we use every day. They’re part of our brain, all the neurons that are connected together and help us to function. They’re in the way that we fight pandemics. And the network science was instrumental in dealing with corona and in recent times. And so it has had tremendous impact on our view on how things function in society and networks. We need to define that because when we think of networks, I think most people will think of their social media accounts, which are of course a network, but it’s a much broader definition. Networks are composed of three things. There are agents in a network, whether that be a technical network or a human network. And those agents, of course, in a human network are people. Then there are links between the agents inside of a network, and those are the way that people are connected in a human network. So email or, or a platform like Facebook or whatever would be one of those links mechanisms. And then of course, there’s the content that travels through the connections, and that’s information. But interesting enough, in human networks, we also need to be talking about things that are intangible, such as emotions or such things as behaviors that can be copied across the network. And so that’s the basic definition of what a network is.
Matt Alder [00:06:56]:
You mentioned there that it’s a new science, it’s been around 20 years or so. Has the development of social media networks sort of given it a huge kind of data set to work for. Is the kind of rise of network science linked to the rise of social media and the way that we’re interconnected and sort of sharing information between each other?
Jeffrey Beeson [00:07:18]:
Well, actually it’s the rise of network science came with the rise of the Internet even before we had social media accounts and trying to understand what the network, the Internet network was all about. And that’s what gave rise to the first real research studies. But having said that, social media accounts have had. Well, it’s an area where network science has absolutely thrived. And we could go into the arcane ideas of algorithms which are based on network science and how, how posts that you will do in a, in a social media will actually be seen by others and what you see on your screen. But these are all, you know, network science is affecting our everyday lives every, all the time as a result of, of how some of these, these social platforms actually function. And that’s, and so, so it’s having an impact on what and how we do things in almost every aspect of our lives.
Matt Alder [00:08:22]:
And how do we apply that to business? What is it about network science that helps us to understand how businesses work or talent management works or leadership works or whatever it is?
Jeffrey Beeson [00:08:32]:
Here’s the interesting thing. So, you know, we can understand sort of networks and network science perhaps when we’re thinking about our social media accounts, but we don’t typically relate that to a business or to our organizations. One of the biggest insights from network science is that all complex systems are based or are structured around network patterns. That means that for instance, all living systems which are complex systems are based on networks, by the way, organizations are complex systems and therefore they’re also based on network structures. It’s an interesting insight because networks. The other big insight from network science is that all networks follow certain principles. There are certain laws of networks and how they interact with each other. If we understand the organizations that we work for as networks and we understand the laws of networks, that actually is a bit of a tiny revolution or a big revolution in how we see leadership and how we see how people are actually acting inside of an organization and what makes an organization, particularly a high performance organization.
Matt Alder [00:10:02]:
That is really interesting. Give us an example of, you know, some of the, the laws of networks and what that looks like on a kind of a business level.
Jeffrey Beeson [00:10:11]:
Okay, well, we can start on all sorts of, of different levels. But the one that I kind of like the best as an illustration is what I call the law, or what is called, I don’t call it, it’s, it’s called the, the law of, of three degrees of influence. And what that means is that you can be influenced by people you’ve never met. And it’s a sort of indirect. The way it works is that when you talk to somebody, you can have an influence on them in the way that you argue and what you talk about. However, it doesn’t stop there. The person that you talk to then also talks to their connections and can influence them with thought thoughts that they might have gotten from you. And then that network of that person you talk to could influence their connections. That’s the third degree or the third degree of influence. And the research has shown that that’s, that’s the way that ideas and behaviors ripple through human society and organizations. It stops there. And by the way, it doesn’t really go much further than that. So that’s sort of like your realm of influence that you have. And where this becomes really interesting for people inside of organizations is when you really want to transmit something, a real message through an organization. One of the things that you want to do is you want to find your best connected individuals, because the best connected individuals are going to have the greatest influence. And as a matter of fact, in network science, they call influencers. And if you can pinpoint who those influencers are, you can transmit not just information, but behaviors and, and emotions. Emotions travel extremely fast through, through networks throughout the organization. And so this is a real huge insight. For instance, for anyone who’s doing a cultural transformation project, this is the fastest way of actually impacting the way an organization’s culture is developed and how it spreads out into the rest of the organization. But that’s true for anything you want to spread out in an organization. So if you have communication that’s really important to make top down communication doesn’t usually or isn’t as effective as making sure that your influencers inside an organization have gotten the message.
Matt Alder [00:12:42]:
How do you know who your influencers are? How do you kind of map the networks out?
Jeffrey Beeson [00:12:46]:
Well, there’s, there’s a whole science of network mapping. It’s called organizational network analysis. And there are various practitioners. Now these are some of the services that we provide in our organization where we can then see how people are connected to each other. And it’s, it’s a pretty simple and not, not too exacting tool because basically you just ask people to say who they’re connected to and who influences them the most. And it could be anonymous if that’s important to a company, but it still allows you to identify where those influences are. Even if you don’t know the names of them, you can find out in what departments they might be. I find the transparency is the best policy. But then you have to share that information with, with people inside the organization because that’s information that’s important and it’s part of the environment. And actually by sharing that information you can all of a sudden change the topography of the network. Very interesting. When people see how they’re connected inside a network, they begin to realize how important it is. And things tend to shift just by looking at the mapping
Matt Alder [00:14:06]:
And do companies sort of look at that and rethink the structure of their organization based on sort of network science rather than the kind of the old hierarchical way of doing things.
Jeffrey Beeson [00:14:15]:
This is a fantastic way to. You know, we talk about change management and change management has typically been a sort of top down trying to convince everyone to move a particular issue through an organization. And we all know that most of those efforts are fairly futile and meet with a lot of resistance. But if you do it in a network based kind of way in which you get influencers on board and are able to leverage that facet, then you can change things much faster. But secondly, what happens is that by connecting people, and this is the amazing thing about network science, is that just a few connections, we always think of that change has to be a super huge effort. Well, if you in network science basically tells us that the right connections and it can be just a few, could change the entire way of system functions because information begins to flow in a completely different way. And so being able to understand what the key points are is important. One of the, the metaphors I use to explain this is that leaders can be like acupuncturists. If they hit the needle in the right point, the energy flows through the body, and if the energy flows to the body, you get a healthy individual. And so that therefore being able to connect different parts of the organization strategically becomes a super important capability of a leader.
Matt Alder [00:16:02]:
What about from a talent acquisition kind of recruiting perspective? Is there anything that network science could, could do there or any effect that it might have?
Jeffrey Beeson [00:16:12]:
Well, from a talent acquisition point of view, there are many things that actually are really important to take. But I actually like to proceed from a talent retention perspective first. And the reason for that is that talent retention is very clearly a connection. So it’s, it’s a, the clear connection to network science is there. And all of the studies are showing that people feel engaged and satisfied when they are well connected inside of an organization. So you’re probably familiar with the HBR study that said that those, those organizations that, that foster a sense of belonging and belonging is a connection issue. It means that I am well connected with people, people inside the organization. Those organizations that foster a sense of belonging see 50% less turnover and they also see 56% improvement in performance and also reduction in 75% in sick days. And this is all due to how people are connected inside the organization. And so if you want, I mean, certainly if you’re thinking about talent from a point of view of, well, yeah, I have to attract talent, but I also, once it’s there in our organization, need to make sure that they stay there and that they feel comfortable in the environment that they’re in, then that is very much a network science issue. And by studying the way that there’s connectivity, if you have a lot of silos in an organization, this is, this is bad news for talent retention. And then if we move to talent acquisition, part of the, of the equation? Well, I would say that certainly if you have well, good talent retention inside your organization, the word of mouth is going to get out that and the through networks that this is a good place to work so that there will be some reverberation that way. But secondly, I think that the network science can be of effect in how to use your networks to identify talent that you want to attract to your organization. And so there is an aspect, an angle here which takes a look at how do you use your networks to attract the talent that you want. And then there’s a second aspect here in terms of talent acquisition which would be how do you onboard people successfully and the best onboarding. And I think this is natural for a lot of onboarding programs, but maybe you need to take a look at it in even more detail is how do you connect people in, across the organization in an onboarding process in such a way that they could be productive as soon as possible.
Matt Alder [00:19:05]:
Yeah and I suppose, you know, understanding the network of the organization allows you to do that perhaps in a different way than you would before, doesn’t it?
Jeffrey Beeson [00:19:13]:
Yes, yes. I mean, it’s. Looking at the internal networks is going to tell you a lot about how successful companies are going to be at retaining talent. And it also tells you to what degree you can work to improve that aspect of your organization.
Matt Alder [00:19:32]:
So as a final question for you, as network science matures and more people understand it, what effect is that going to have on the business businesses of the future? What, what are, what are the, the companies of the future going to look like.
Jeffrey Beeson [00:19:45]:
Well this is, this is what’s really fascinating. You know, everybody talks about agile, right, and, and adaptability and, and be flexible in the face of change. And you know, there’s a network reasoning behind what’s going on as why we’re seeing so much disruption, why things are, are moving the way that they’re moving. And that is, you know, because networks are moving at a much faster pace nowadays than they ever were before. The aspects of networks that have changed in our lifetimes in the last 20 years are that the cost of connection has dropped to almost zero. You know, most of us can now have a video conference with almost any part of the world and the flow of information through the networks that we have has exponentially exploded. You know, data of all types and sorts is flowing through networks in ways that never was imaginable, even maybe 10 years ago. And so the reason that we’ve seen so much disruption, so much change in our world today is because networks are functioning differently. And the only way we’re going to get a handle on all of this change is by, you know, offering network solutions to network problems. Which means we’ve already seen part of that. We’re seeing agile methods that are growing, we’re seeing platforms that are growing, ways of connecting people that, that were not dimensional previously. And you have to have network solutions to network problems. And, but the thing is, is if you extrapolate this and you take it to its natural conclusion, which is what we’re going to experience over the next several years is an acceleration of that effect and our organizations need to accelerate in their response. And so what we’re seeing, and it’s already exists today. So I’m not telling you something theoretical about the future. I’m telling you and talking to you about things that exist already today. We have what we call, are what I call network organizations. And network organizations have basically set themselves up to mimic networks and to, I mean, in the sense of not being the kind of structured, hierarchical organizations that we’re familiar with. And what I mean by that is that they, they set up small teams. The entire organization is set up in small teams. Usually, you know, about 10 people in these teams who are very autonomous. And if, and these teams are interconnected with each other through contracts, but otherwise fairly autonomous, and they can shift and adapt very rapidly. One of the things, one of the very interesting aspects of these organizations is that nobody has a title. In many cases, nobody has a boss, because things are shifting constantly so that it doesn’t make any sense to have titles. Your role changes with the environment that is changing around you. And it is all based on two aspects, two very interesting principles. Zero distance in customer. You have immediate input from a customer, either internal customer, a small team that gets services or product from you, or an external customer. And the second principle, which is intentional interdependence. In other words, every one of these small teams depends on the other small teams to function, and that’s what builds the cohesion. And when those two are in place, these types of organizations are so, so much more competitive than the traditional hierarchical organizations. It’s amazing. And I’ll give you an example, because it exists already and it’s an amazing example. General Electric Appliances in the United States went according to these principles. They set themselves up this way. It’s a traditional organization that makes washing machines and things like that. And in five years they had 2,800 innovations. They have been growing at double digits in an industry that’s like a 2% growth. And they’ve catapulted themselves from fourth place in market share to first place in market share. This is the kind of competitiveness that’s going to happen, and the companies that are moving in this direction are going to rate the benefits.
Matt Alder [00:24:36]:
Jeffrey, thank you very much for talking to me.
Jeffrey Beeson [00:24:40]:
My pleasure.
Matt Alder [00:24:41]:
My thanks to Jeffrey. You can follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can find all the past episodes at recruitingfuture.com on that site. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Recruiting Future Feast, and get the inside track on everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
