Network analysis

Which actors are involved and how do they get moving?

The follow-up to Network Analysis is the Eco Analysis

Initiative

What is the shared ambition of the carriers? It is the driving force behind why the carriers take action. This is not the same as a goal to be achieved.
Carriers

Which people can you count on? Who gets on with it, even if others drop out? Who lies awake because of it? Remember that these are people, not institutions.
Factors

What will change if the initiative succeeds? For a change to be possible, all sorts of things have to move with it. Formulate each as a factor. For example, money, knowledge, technology, press, public opinion, etc.
Actors

Which people change their behaviour if the initiative succeeds? For each factor, find people who will do something else if everything works out.
Links

Which people can be approached by one of the carriers, to connect with one of the actors? Remember that these are people, not the institutions they work for. As a link, they need not be as driven as the carriers.
Do tips

Focusing not on the goal but on the ambition. Causing movement is different from making others do what you want. The outcome of co-creation is uncertain, but may be better than what you envisioned when you started the initiative.

People, not institutions. You connect with people. Institutions are the structure that enables or blocks change. Whether anything changes depends on people active in those institutions.

Search beyond power structures: The network analysis allows you to visualise warm networks rather than power structures with interests. Of course they do play a role: they partly determine the space your discussion partners have in the warm network. For the other part, the space they can acquire as free actors, you can make something new possible together.

How does network analysis work?

Network analysis examines relationships:

What is the initiative?
Which factors matter?
Which actors do you want to get moving?
Who are carrying partners?
Which people can connect these partners with those actors?

The initiative is central

The network analysis starts with people with a shared ambition to set something in motion. We call this the "WE" network. Their initiative succeeds if others move as a result. These others are the "THEY" network. In it, factors (e.g. public opinion, or money) and actors (e.g. opinion leaders, or financiers) can be distinguished. Because carriers usually do not have direct access to the actors in the "THEY" network, they need links that can make the connection. Those links need not be as driven as the carriers of the initiative.

The analysis looks at people rather than institutions with interests, as is usual in actor analyses. This opens the way to building a warm network with people as free actors using the space provided to them by the institutions they belong to, with the central question being, "What can we make possible together?"

How do you work with it?

You can do a network analysis together (preferably) or alone. Take a large sheet of paper (flap chart), and use coloured sticky notes and markers.

Place the initiative in the centre.
Place the carriers around that. One note for each carrier.
Place the factors in a large outer circle.
Add actors to each factor.
Consider who might be links, and place them between the carrier and the actor to whom this link might connect him or her.

What do you do with the result?

The resulting image of the network shows:

What this initiative is really about,
Insight in which actors will move if the initiative is successful,
Which actors are and are not yet in the picture in the activities so far,
How strong or weak the supporting network is,
Who could be important as a link.

This creates an agenda for action: what needs attention first? What relationships need to be worked on? And who can do so?

How does network analysis work?

How do you work with it?

What do you do with the result?

Initiative

'We'

Factors

'They'

Links

Carriers

Actors

Links

Factors