The Corporate Lattice

The Industrial Age has taught us that to advance, you simply climb up the ladder — rung after rung. Typically it takes years to bump up a level and often the increase in responsibility and compensation is minimal. In an Information Age workplace, you have the opportunity to not only move across different parts of the firm but make an impact there as well. Of course, that is if they know how to get noticed and their firm provides a culture for open communication and individual mobility.

I personally know of countless stories at my previous and current firm where someone moved to a new career, line of business and even continents all within the same organization. The common theme between all of them was each becoming “top of mind” by creating content on the internal social network. That content ranged from regularly blogging to commenting to hosting a meetup displaying expertise. When that topic became a strategic priority, guess who was “top of mind” in expertise and already had community in hand? I remember one colleague saying “I want to move to the U.S. and have X, Y & Z skills.” Sure enough a few months later, I was taking him for a welcome Cuban sandwich in New York City.

The truth is that lattice mobility can easily happen in person. The hard truth is that lattice mobility ONLY happens in person at many firms. Without open communication platforms and culture, organizations only elevate those who were “at the right place, at the right time” and leave behind those who may have the right expertise, but aren’t in the right geographical location.

The question then becomes how can you imitate these chance encounters and create the energy and the ‘top of mind’ opportunity for yourself and your team within the organization? As companies are more and more dispersed global organizations with teams and services around the world, what is the best way to connect and collaborate with those who don’t sit on the same floor as you?

To answer these questions & to enable optimized lattice mobility, there are two main focus points: the culture and behaviors of the organization, and opportunities for individuals taking advantage of their digital network

The Organization

Lattice mobility is one of many direct returns on investment of having a culture of open communication. Your recruiters are currently scouring LinkedIn for expertise that already resides in house. Retaining and finding talent is costly. Most likely your firm has an email-first culture and has dabbled with an employee social network. It is critical that your firm has a place to work and interact “out loud.”

Throughout the book, so far we have covered on how to lay the foundation for an open culture, we’ll now focus on the individual.

The Individual

Think of the entire user experience of someone looking you up. What do they see when looking you up in the directory or clicking on your profile? Do the keywords that you want to be top of mind for stick out? What about your LinkedIn profile? Chances are most colleagues already have a robust profile on LinkedIn and will look there first to get to know you digitally.

Professional photo: this should be obvious today, but so often professionals leave their photo as the default or of a family photo. When someone passes you in the hall, will they recognize you? Besides, do you right away introduce your family to everyone you meet?

Contribute (like, comment, share): liking other posts is a great way of validating worthy content. The reciprocation becomes natural and allows for a strong and resilient network of individuals.

Write: the hardest one of them all. If you are not comfortable creating your own blog posts, write a draft and never publish it. Find an email where you explained something so passionately that many others would benefit from hearing your thoughts.

Start or lead a group: Maybe you’re better at hosting the party than giving a keynote speech. Creating and facilitating online and offline groups naturally turns you into a subject matter expert by proximity. If you’re connecting individuals and consistently participating in the conversation, you’re bound to become as knowledgeable as the people your surround yourself with.

Be you: as close to your authentic self is what you want people to experience when they look you up. Have a sense of humor? Don’t hide it in your writing or your profile. We often hear that people want to work with someone they could have a beer, coffee or tea with.

Attend and/or organize events: We all know offline interactions are typically much stronger than online conversations, but utilize the efficient online utilities of groups and networking and bring them offline. Awkward small talk at a networking event?…not with a group of like-minded individuals who have already expressed their interest in a topic.

Open up

While the concept of lattice mobility may not be new, digital infrastructures give us ability to increase exponentially all the while making for stronger organizations and individuals.

Do you have a story where you or someone you know has made a lateral or upward move thanks to being “top of mind” at an organization? (We may ask to include these stories in the book).

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This post is the latest in a series of explorations by Alan Berkson and me into what we are calling The Control Scale, a guide to digital communication and collaboration. If you’d like to stay up-to-date with our happenings, please subscribe to our mailing list. Yeah, it’s old school, but email is not dead. Mistreated, maybe. But not dead.