The Silent War on Change-And How ONA Helps You Win

Archive note:
Originally published on LinkedIn on March 5, 2025. This article is preserved here as part of the evolution of our thinking on Organizational Network Analysis, informal power, social capital, and the hidden networks that determine whether organizational change takes hold.

Every organization knows that change is inevitable - whether it's a new strategy, digital transformation, or team reorganization. However, if we look at the statistics, most major changes fail to achieve their full potential. Why? Because they are planned for structures, not for people.

Organizations often introduce more procedures and rules to increase control and efficiency. One key factor in Organizational Citizenship Behavior is obedience. In an organizational setting, obedience is linked to compliance, adherence to rules, and respect for authority -expectations that organizations frequently place on their employees.

However, excessive regulation often makes work more difficult for employees. When there are too many poorly connected procedures, they often contradict each other, forcing employees to find alternative solutions. This leads to workaround solutions - informal ways of working that bypass complex, inefficient, or even pointless procedures.

Over time, these unwritten rules and informal practices become the organization's real operational system. When it's time for change, management tries to modify the written procedures, while the actual operational norms and ways of working remain unchanged.

The problem? It's hard to change what we don't see. This is one of the key reasons why change management often fails to achieve the desired results.

The Problem with the Traditional Approach to Change

In most organizations, the change strategy comes from the top. Management is expected to implement the change, while employees are expected to accept it. But people don't embrace change just because someone tells them they must. They accept change when they see it is embraced by people they trust - people with informal influence, often not found on the organizational chart.

This brings us to the concept of social capital. As human beings and as employees in organizations, we possess two types of capital:

Let's set aside human capital and focus on social capital.

Social capital includes:

Human capital is measurable, whereas social capital is often overlooked in organizations, despite its crucial role in the success of change initiatives.

The Real Power in Organizations

Every organization has formal leaders - executive directors, team managers, project leaders, etc. But who are the real drivers of change?

They are the connectors, the people who shape opinions and act as bridges between different teams. They may not hold the highest-ranking positions, but they play a crucial role in the adoption and implementation of new ideas and change initiatives.

They can be:

If these individuals are not included in the change strategy, there is a high probability that the change will face resistance - not because the change itself is bad, but because it didn’t come from within the network of trust.

How ONA Helps Identify Invisible Power

When discussing Organizational Network Analysis (ONA), it is often said that it helps us recognize real networks of influence within organizations. And that is absolutely true.

From a change management perspective, instead of introducing change solely through formal structures, ONA allows us to analyze the mapped organizational network. This enables us to:

As mentioned earlier, networking is one of the key components of social capital. If we don’t know how strong the networks of those resisting change are, we may face an impossible mission when trying to implement change.

Similarly, if we fail to identify the resources available to those who oppose change, our change initiatives are likely to end in complete failure.

The Dark Side of Power and Resistance to Change

In addition to networking, social capital includes relationships and access to resources. Power within an organization can be defined as access to organizational resources, and one of the most significant resources is  - decision-making.

The more people have access to decision-making, the less individual power they hold. This is why people often try to limit access to decision-making in order to increase their influence, ideally becoming absolute rulers over these resources.

Power in organizations can come from three primary sources:

Here’s how each of them can negatively impact organizational change:

1. Structural Power

Structural power comes from the organizational hierarchy. If individuals or groups who hold this type of power are not inclined toward change, they can slow it down in various ways:

2. Individual Power

Individuals with high informal power can resist change if they perceive it as a threat to their influence or access to resources, especially to decision making resource.

Since their power is built on trust, they can use manipulative tactics to sway opinions through informal communication channels.

We must not forget that these individuals have gained their power through the trust of other employees, thanks to their knowledge, experience, and role as informal leaders.

If we want to understand how power operates within an organization, we ask questions such as:

• Who do employees turn to when they need a solution?

• Who are the informal leaders shaping opinions?

• Who are the connectors enabling information to spread quickly?

Beyond direct resistance, sabotage can also take the form of passive resistance, where key individuals simply refuse to actively engage in the change - sending a strong signal to others that the change is not worth supporting.

3. Task Power

Task power stems from control over specialized knowledge, critical tasks, and processes. Resistance to change can manifest as:

- Deliberate withholding of critical information, under the excuse of "not having enough time" to share knowledge.

- Slow execution of operational tasks, creating the impression that the change is not working.

- The "this won't work" mentality, where experts intentionally undermine the credibility of new initiatives by leveraging their authority

We’ve all seen situations where key employees refuse to share crucial information needed for successful change, often under the pretext of "more pressing priorities."

Change as a Game of Chess – A Key Lesson for Leaders

Jumping into change without analyzing power dynamics is a sure path to failure. Successful organizational change is not just about well-defined strategies and procedures - it depends on understanding the invisible dynamics of power, trust, and influence within an organization.

ONA is not just a tool - it is an X-ray of the organization. It is a chessboard that allows leaders to make the right moves at the right time.

Too often, ONA is seen only as a tool for visualizing communication flows, but it is so much more than that. ONA is a mindset - a way of thinking that allows managers to see beyond the surface and recognize the hidden forces shaping organizational change.

If we want change to be lasting and successful, we must stop ignoring the true power in organizations. It does not reside only in organizational charts, formal titles, or hierarchy - but in the people who connect, inspire, and shape culture.

- To successfully implement change, we must first understand the networks of influence that can either support or sabotage it.

- Without this insight, change management is merely a formality, not a transformation.

We have a choice: to play chess without knowing the rules or to map the game before making our moves.

ONA provides the key pieces, the rules, and the strategic moves—it's up to leaders to use them wisely.

Change is not a battle - it is a strategic chess match. And in this game, victory belongs to those who understand how to play.