Using ONA in My Own Onboarding
An Experiment in Network Analysis
Most new hires spend their first month learning their job and the org chart. I spent mine mapping the invisible network underneath it. The typical onboarding process involves 1:1 meetings based on a list from your manager—valuable, but limited. I wanted more than introductions and connections. As a fan of organizational network analysis (ONA), I saw an opportunity to turn my onboarding into an experiment.
While org charts show formal reporting relationships, they miss the informal networks that determine how work actually gets done—who collaborates with whom, who people turn to for help, where influence really flows. An ONA uncovers these patterns—the social capital that no traditional onboarding program addresses. I wanted to tap into that network as quickly as possible.
The Process
During my first month, my leader set up several 1:1 meetings for me to meet key people in my role. This inital set of meetings connected me to team members, stakeholders, peers and key partners. But I took it a step further. After each initial 1:1 meeting, I sent a thank you email and asked for their help in answering three simple questions:
Who are the 2-10 people that you currently spend the most time with?
When you’ve got a tough problem to solve, who are the 2-5 people you are most likely to go to for help?
When you need advice or coaching, who are the 1-3 people you are most likely to talk to?
As I gathered that information, I found new names that came up repeatedly from different people. I reached out to those key individuals in the network with additional 1:1 meetings. Each new conversation generated more names, more connections and more data.
After collecting this data over my first month, I was ready to analyze the data coming from this active data collection. I linked the data with some employee demographics data (eg job title, location, level) and created a network map using Gephi, an open-source network mapping tool. If you don’t have Gephi, try some AI tools to generate network graphs based on your data.
Insights from the ONA
After running this process and mapping the data, I found myself armed with insights. I won’t share full details of this network map for confidentiality reasons but here are three insights I gained from the map.
My stakeholders were siloed into different groups.
All these groups needed my help but they had different problems they were tackling. That means that I needed to spend more time to understand their needs and encourage more collaboration across these groups as needed.
The members of my team occupied different places in the network.
Some were more central, well-positioned across multiple groups while others were more peripheral with connections to other important stakeholders. I needed to leverage their networks to be able to reach the broad set of stakeholders.
No one person has insight into the full network.
That includes my leader. While my leader had a lot of valuable connections, my 1:1s led to additional connections that gave me a fuller picture of the network. Had I done the map just of the data for my initial 1:1s, the map would be smaller and incomplete. By continuing to ask who people worked with, I discovered other key individuals that should be part of my expanded network.
Takeaways from the Process
Traditional onboarding process tend to focus more on indivdual relationships and the organizational chart. An ONA shifts the lens to the value of social capital locked up in organizations and taps into the collective value of relationships and informal networks.
As a new employee, my future value doesn’t just come from my skills and experiences. My future sucess will stem from how well-connected I become and my understanding of how effectively information and collaboration flow through the organization. Understanding the network will allow me to leverage strategies to succeed quickly in a new role.
My onboarding experiment taught me that starting a new role isn’t just about what I need to know—it’s about who knows what, who works with whom, and how to plug into the social network that actually gets things done. The org chart showed me the formal structure. The network map showed me reality.
Bloody brilliant. I am going to use this in my next m&a project.