I’ve been giving a great deal of thought to the alignment of these three organizational structures (both formal and informal, as you’ve said). While I could see some potential problems with trying to create a perfect alignment between these three entities, I could also see many benefits in playing to the strengths of the existing social networks within an organization.

Conversely, however, I could also see some benefits around ‘shaking up’ all three of these complex systems. Allowing new nodes to be created in a social network through the interaction of previously unrelated individuals could have some possibly-unforseen (but also difficult to measure) consequences.

But then there is the “Real Organization” which is where project organizations belong, Joint Venture programs with internal and external stakeholders, small projects and workflow assignments, and the ad hoc work assignments that people frequently do as a result of meeting or getting ready for meetings. The roles assigned are very real and they define exactly how the projects are executed under the leadership of the Project Manager. Access to working documents, and the all the issues of security and compliance impact these roles just as much it does the formal organization. In our experience we have seen as many as 3 to 10 separate roles being assigned to an individual as they take up positions on different project or committees. We call this the real organization because in knowledge intensive companies all the real work products originate in such an organization before they make their way to the formal organization.

The third organization is the recently much-talked-about social networks, also refered to in the past as the informal organization. Informal social networks are very important partly because they are informal and because they tap into the natural affinity of people who work with others who share their interests; who are of help on matters that require disparate skills or specialized knowledge; or who enjoy their relationships and work very collaboratively and well with the others in their network. Social networks are very important in establishing the RACI charts or assignments in critical projects where the risks are high, and trust is an important commodity in the relationships. Network maps are the easiest way to depict these relationships becasue people can be members of multiple networks and while these networks cluster around a “topic” they can also cluster around individuals. People who are connectors can form the nodes in many such netowrk diagrams.

In order to have all these three relationships shown it is indeed essential to have an ontology representation. With an ontology engine, it is possible to express these relationships and it is possible to attribute them according to expertise, social connectivity, and the formal pecking order of the organization.