Pollard on SNA: What to Map

Dave Pollard talks about Social Network Analysis: What to Map after reading Cross and Parker's The Hidden Power of Social Networks.  He also refers to our friend, Valdis Krebs.

What could you do with this information? Imagine you could recast the SNA map at the top of this article with a second map that showed the perceived quality of information transfer (each way) between you and others in your network, and a third map that showed the perceived degree of trust (each way) between you and others in your network? If the perceptions each way, or between the three maps, were markedly different, this could be startling and potentially very useful knowledge. Unlike the authors of The Hidden Power of Social Networks, however, I think in the hands of management it would be dangerous, disruptive, and perhaps even abusive. But suppose the perceptions of you by others (how 'well' you do in each of the 16 qualitative attributes above) was available exclusively and privately to you? This, I believe, could be astonishingly valuable as a self-assessment tool.