Social network analysis

Today, financial regulators are finding innovation much harder to realise amidst several competing concerns. With a more diverse grouping of fintech firms, regulation has become increasingly more challenging (Yadav, 2020). We teamed up with a specialist unit within a UK financial regulator to upgrade their knowledge management system. Through a social network analysis, they were able to harness the collective knowledge of the unit to alter behaviors and achieve business outcomes more quickly.

At an organisational level, social network analysis (SNA) is the study of individuals and the relations that connect and divide them, as well as the patterns and implications of such relationships. Identifying these interactions can enable individuals to better understand where they fit within the organizational network, and alter behaviors accordingly.

With a high concentration of specialist knowledge, the unit’s capacity to operationalize and protect its intellectual property are key to the fulfilment of its mandate. Its managers wanted to understand how to improve knowledge exchange and management.

We conducted a social network analysis to locate informal networks and invisible workflows within the unit. We identified individuals whose expertise was underutilized, as well as any work bottlenecks. The results showed that improvements should be focused at the sub-team level within the unit.

We also discovered that threats to knowledge retention were related to issues with stress management and provided actionable recommendations to solve them.

We have a lot of specialists in [our unit], and it's that expertise that equips us to make informed decisions about the challenges we face. We need to understand the threats to knowledge retention, so that we can take pre-emptive action where necessary.

Unit Manager at UK financial regulator

Future

Optimizing operations and driving innovation for the future

The unit is using the insights from our social network analysis to inform decisions about how it builds capabilities in innovation and operational excellence.

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