The Influence Graph is how a new leader comes to understand the informal organization: who people rely on, who connects the place across its boundaries, where knowledge really lives, and how decisions actually come together. You read it alongside the formal org chart. It draws on the listening tour conversations, so no one fills out a survey or takes part in a separate exercise. The purpose is to understand how the organization collaborates so you can work with it and help it work better. Set the two side by side, and the places they differ are where the understanding is.
The cornerstone of this series made the case for understanding a business before you try to change it. The listening tour that followed showed how to gather that understanding through structured conversations that turn scattered impressions into a clear picture a new leader can rely on. This article is about what you do with that picture next: how a set of honest conversations becomes a working grasp of how the organization really operates.
Here is the awkward thing every incoming executive discovers within a month. You were handed one map on your first day, and it is the wrong one.
The org chart is a diagram of authority. It tells you who is accountable to whom, whose budget is whose, and where the boxes sit. That is real information, and you need it.
But the chart describes how work is supposed to flow, and organizations rarely work the way their charts say they do. The person whose title suggests they run a function may not be the one the function actually relies on. The decision the chart says one executive owns may in practice come together among several people long before it reaches them. The deepest customer knowledge in the company may sit two levels below anyone with “customer” in their title. None of that is on the chart, and much of it shapes whether your first initiative takes hold.
The org chart is a diagram of authority. The informal organization is a picture of how work actually happens. New leaders are handed the first and left to understand the second on their own.
- The chart is necessary and rarely sufficient. It shows reporting lines, not how work, trust, and decisions really move. Decades of organizational research point to the informal organization as where much of the real work happens.
- The Influence Graph brings four things into view the chart can't: who people rely on, who connects the organization, where knowledge lives, and how decisions come together.
- It grows out of conversations you've already had. The understanding comes from the listening tour. No one is surveyed or asked to diagram their relationships.
- The differences between the two are where the insight is. Where the formal chart and the informal picture diverge is often where a new leader learns the most.
- The intent is understanding, not maneuvering. You come to know how the organization collaborates so you can strengthen it: involve the right perspectives, protect institutional knowledge, and reduce organizational risk.
Why the Org Chart Is the Wrong Map
Start with what the chart is good for. It settles accountability, it clarifies budgets and headcount, and it gives a new leader a clear model of the formal structure. Keep it. The problem is not that the chart is false. The problem is that it answers a different question than the one you actually have.
Your question, in your first months, is not “who reports to whom.” It is “how does the work really get done here, and who makes it happen.” Those are not the same question, and the chart only answers the first. The classic Harvard Business Review study of informal networks made the point a generation ago: much of the real work in any company happens through an informal organization of relationships that cut across functions and levels, and the formal chart is nearly silent about it. The authors described three networks living behind every org chart: who people go to for advice, who they trust with something sensitive, and who they actually talk to about the work. None of the three matched the boxes and lines.
McKinsey reached a similar conclusion studying how information moves inside companies. Formal structures explain surprisingly little about how day-to-day work gets done, and a great deal of it flows through informal networks the chart never shows, where people become hubs because of what they know rather than where they sit. The pattern is consistent enough to treat as a rule. The chart describes the skeleton. The organization lives in the connective tissue the chart leaves out.
For a new leader, this is concrete. Every change you make travels through the informal organization, not the formal one. Push a priority down the reporting lines and it reaches the boxes. Whether it reaches the people who shape understanding, hold the memory, and help work get unstuck depends on a picture you have not drawn yet. That picture is the Influence Graph.
What the Influence Graph Brings Into View
The Influence Graph brings four dimensions of the informal organization into view. Each one answers a question the chart can't, and each is present in the conversations you have already had if you know to listen for it.
Trust is the first layer, and the most important. Not who people are friendly with, but who they actually go to when a question is hard, a situation is sensitive, or the official answer is not quite enough. Trust is where candor and real understanding travel, and it rarely follows the reporting lines. People rely on the colleague who has been proven right, kept a confidence, or helped without an agenda, and that person may sit anywhere on the chart. Knowing where trust runs tells you where the organization's honest conversations happen.
Connectors are the second layer: the people who hold the organization together across its functions, levels, and locations. In every company a few people carry a disproportionate share of the cross-boundary relationships. They are the ones others point you toward, the ones who seem to know someone everywhere. HBR's study of these roles described how a handful of central connectors do far more than their share to move understanding and help work get unstuck, and how much an organization quietly depends on them. They are often invisible on the chart, because connecting is not their job title. It is just what they do.
Knowledge is the third layer: where real expertise and institutional memory live, as opposed to where the chart implies they should. The person with the deepest grasp of why the last platform migration went the way it did, or how a key account really behaves, or which process everyone quietly works around, may be nowhere near the top of the relevant box. Understanding where knowledge sits tells you two things a new leader needs: whom to learn from, and where the organization leans heavily on a single person who holds something essential.
Decision-making is the fourth layer, and the one most likely to surprise you: how decisions come together, as distinct from who formally owns them. Bain's well-known study of decision-making found that in most organizations the real friction is a lack of clarity about who actually decides what, and that formal authority and real decision-making often come apart. Understanding this layer means seeing how an important decision really forms: who gets consulted, whose perspective carries weight, and how agreement actually takes shape.
| Layer | What it shows | What surfaces it in the conversations |
|---|---|---|
| Trust | Who people rely on for candor and real understanding. | The same names recur when people describe who they actually go to, rarely the names directly above them. |
| Connectors | Who links the organization across functions, levels, and regions. | “You should really talk to…” points to a short list of people again and again. |
| Knowledge | Where deep expertise and institutional memory live. | On a hard question, everyone points you to the same one or two people, often below the expected title. |
| Decision-making | How important decisions come together and who takes part. | Accounts of how a past decision came together keep including people the formal process leaves out. |
It Grows Out of Conversations You've Already Had
Here is the part that makes the Influence Graph humane rather than intrusive, and it is the most important thing to understand about it. You do not run a separate exercise. No one is surveyed about their relationships. No one is asked to name their most trusted colleagues or diagram who they go to. The understanding is drawn, on your side, from the listening conversations already under way.
That is a deliberate choice. It keeps the experience, for everyone in the company, a thoughtful conversation rather than something clinical, even as it produces a genuine understanding of how the place works. When you ask people how work really gets done, who they turn to when they are stuck, or how a particular decision came together, they tell you, and the same names start to recur. Someone a few levels down gets named in several unrelated conversations as the person who really knows the product. Two teams that supposedly collaborate never mention each other at all. None of this needs a special question. It needs listening for who, not just what, and writing the names down.
Because you captured every conversation the same way, the names and recurring points are there to notice rather than reconstruct from memory. You can see that one person was pointed to by many others, or that an entire region never came up in conversations held at headquarters. The structure of the listening is what makes this picture clear instead of impressionistic, and the judgment about what it means stays firmly with you.
Reading the Differences
Now you hold two pictures: the formal chart you were handed, and the informal understanding you have built. The value is not in either alone. It is in setting them side by side and paying attention to where they differ.
Where the two agree, you have confirmed the official story. Where they part company, you have learned something no one handed you, and it is often the most useful thing you learn in an entire transition. A few differences show up so often they are worth naming in advance.
The hidden connector. Someone others rely on turns out to be a bridge across the organization. Involve them early, because understanding travels through them.
The unclear decision. A decision looks like one person's on the chart but really comes together among several. Understand how it forms before assuming the chart is right.
The knowledge resting on one person. Something essential lives with a single person and is not written down. That is an organizational risk worth reducing now.
The missing link. Two teams that need to work closely have no real relationship between them. That gap is worth understanding, and often worth closing.
Each of these is invisible on the chart and clear in the informal picture, and each changes how a careful leader would act. The point of naming them is not to judge individuals. It is to turn a vague sense that “the place doesn't run the way it's drawn” into specific, checkable observations you can act on.
Two cautions keep this honest. First, the picture is provisional. It is built from what people shared, which is real and also partial, so you check it in the open before you rely on it, testing whether the connector you noticed really is one and whether a decision forms the way you think. Second, low visibility is not low value. Plenty of quietly essential people never come up as connectors because they do focused, individual work superbly. This picture shows how understanding and trust flow. It does not rank anyone's worth, and a leader who confuses the two will misread it badly.
The Ethics of Understanding
There is a reasonable objection to all of this, and it deserves a direct answer. Coming to understand who people rely on, who connects the place, and how decisions form can sound like learning to manage the organization from the shadows. If that were the point, it would not be worth doing.
So the intent is stated plainly, and it shapes how the understanding is built and used. The Influence Graph exists to understand how an organization collaborates so a leader can help it work better. The line between that and something colder is clear.
The purpose is to understand organizational patterns and dependencies, not to build files on individuals. Recurring names are simply how patterns show up. What matters is the pattern, not a private verdict on a person. Use the understanding to strengthen how the organization works: to involve the right perspectives, protect institutional knowledge, reduce organizational risk, and support healthy working relationships. Hold it lightly, because people and relationships change, and treat it as understanding to check and discuss openly rather than a fixed conclusion. Kept to that purpose, it serves the organization and the people in it.
This is not only a matter of principle, though it is that. It is also practical. The moment an organization senses it is being studied for advantage, the openness that made the conversations honest fades, and with it the quality of the understanding. The care that keeps this respectful is the same care that keeps it accurate.
What the Understanding Is For
Understanding you never use is a curiosity. The Influence Graph earns its place because it improves specific decisions a new leader has to make anyway, usually in the first hundred days.
It helps a change take hold. Every change has to travel through the organization to take root. The chart tells you whom to inform. Understanding the informal organization tells you whom to involve early: the people others rely on, whose engagement signals to everyone else that this is real, and the perspectives worth understanding before a decision rather than after. A change that moves with the organization's real relationships takes hold. One pushed only through the formal lines tends to stall in polite agreement.
It protects institutional knowledge. The knowledge layer shows where something essential rests on a single person with no backup. That is a risk worth reducing calmly, by building redundancy and writing down what matters, rather than discovering it the week that person leaves. Managed early, it becomes resilience instead of exposure.
It helps you involve the right perspectives. Whether a change succeeds often depends on perspectives that do not line up neatly with titles. It helps you make sure the people a decision genuinely affects are part of shaping it, which is both fairer and far more likely to work.
If this logic feels familiar, it should. Understanding how a group reaches a decision, including who is relied on and whose perspective carries weight, is exactly the discipline ERM's Buying Group Mapping applies to a customer's buying committee. The Influence Graph is that same care pointed inward, at the organization you just joined. In both cases, the org chart or the vendor's contact list is the map you are given, and the real understanding is the one you have to build.
A single-page canvas for sketching the four layers from your listening tour notes: trust, connectors, knowledge, and decision-making, with prompts for reading the differences against the formal chart and an ethics-of-use reminder. Employer-agnostic, and designed to be filled in from conversations you have already had.
Download the canvas (PDF) →A Reflection Before You Begin
Before you try to understand the informal organization, a short reflection. For each statement, consider how true it feels today, from 1 (not yet) to 5 (fully, and I could point to why).
| # | Statement |
|---|---|
| 1 | I have run structured listening conversations and captured them consistently, so the names and recurring points are in my notes rather than my memory. |
| 2 | I listened for who, not just what: who people rely on, who they were pointed to, who really knows. |
| 3 | I have the current formal org chart, and I understand what it does and does not claim to show. |
| 4 | I can name the people who came up repeatedly as go-to sources across unrelated conversations. |
| 5 | I can describe how at least one important recent decision actually came together, beyond who formally owned it. |
| 6 | I can see where something essential rests on a single person with no backup. |
| 7 | I treat what I see as a picture to check and discuss openly, not a private conclusion. |
| 8 | I am clear about why I am doing this: to understand and support how the organization works. |
Mostly 4s and 5s: you have what you need. Sketch the picture and start checking it in the open. A mix of 2s and 3s: the instinct is right, but a layer or two is thin, usually how decisions form or where knowledge sits. The canvas below gives you the prompts to fill them in. Mostly 1s and 2s: the gap is almost always upstream, in listening that was not structured enough to leave you the material. Strengthen the listening tour first. This picture is only as good as the conversations beneath it.
Where to Start
- Revisit the conversations you've had. Go back through your notes and gather the names and points that kept coming up: who people rely on, who they were pointed to, who really knows. The material is already there.
- Bring the four layers into view one at a time. Trust, connectors, knowledge, and decision-making, considered in turn. Trying to see all four at once produces a blur. Taking them one by one produces understanding.
- Set it beside the formal chart. Put the informal picture next to the org chart and note where they differ. Those differences are where the insight is: the hidden connector, the unclear decision, the knowledge resting on one person, the missing link.
- Check before you rely on it. Treat each difference as something to understand and confirm, quietly and in the open, before you act on it.
- Keep it in service of the organization. Use what you learn to strengthen working relationships and reduce risk. That purpose is what keeps the understanding both respectful and accurate.
Continue the Series
The Influence Graph is the mapping phase of the Organizational Intelligence System. From understanding how the organization works, the series turns next to what its leadership believes:
- Executive Alignment: how to understand what your leadership team actually agrees on, drawing on the same listening conversations.
- The First Executive Presentation: what new leaders should present instead of a plan. It is the readout that turns everything they have heard and come to understand into earned trust.
Key Takeaways
- The chart is not the territory. The org chart shows authority. The informal organization shows how work, trust, and decisions actually move, and a new leader has to understand the second.
- Four layers describe the real organization. Who people rely on, who connects it, where knowledge lives, and how decisions come together.
- It grows out of conversations you already had. The understanding comes from the listening tour, on your side. Nothing separate is asked of anyone.
- The differences are where the insight is. Set the informal picture beside the formal chart, and where they diverge is where a new leader learns the most.
- In service of the organization. The intent is to improve how the place works, and that care is also what keeps the picture accurate.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Influence Graph?
The Influence Graph is the mapping phase of the Organizational Intelligence System. It is how a new leader comes to understand the informal organization: who people rely on, who connects the place, where knowledge actually lives, and how decisions really come together. You read it alongside the formal org chart. It draws on the listening tour conversations, so no one takes part in anything separate, and the places the two pictures differ are where the understanding is.
How is the Influence Graph different from an org chart?
An org chart shows reporting lines and formal authority: who is accountable to whom. It is a picture of how work is supposed to flow. The Influence Graph shows how work, trust, and decisions really move, which is often quite different. The chart is necessary and rarely sufficient. The informal picture is what a new leader has to come to understand, and the two are most useful read together.
Do employees have to fill out a survey or take part in an exercise?
No. The Influence Graph asks nothing separate of the organization. It grows out of the listening tour conversations a leader is already having: the names that recur, the people others point to, where candor and expertise cluster. Participants experience a thoughtful conversation, not a survey. The understanding is noticed later, on the leader's side, from what was already shared.
What does the Influence Graph bring into view?
Four things the chart cannot show. Trust, meaning who people rely on when a question is hard or sensitive. Connectors, the people who hold the organization together across its boundaries. Knowledge, where real expertise and institutional memory live regardless of title. And decision-making, how decisions come together and who takes part. Together they describe how the organization really works.
Isn't understanding the informal organization just office politics?
Only if you use it that way, which is why the intent is stated plainly. The Influence Graph is meant to understand organizational patterns and dependencies so a leader can strengthen how the place works: involve the right perspectives, protect institutional knowledge, reduce organizational risk, and support healthy working relationships. It is about patterns, not private files on individuals, and it is held lightly and discussed openly. Kept to that purpose, it serves the organization and the people in it.
What do you do with this understanding once you have it?
You use it to work with the grain of the organization: to involve the people a change genuinely depends on, to protect knowledge that rests on one person, and to route important work through the relationships the organization actually relies on rather than only the ones the chart names. It is a picture to check and discuss in the open, not a fixed conclusion to act on privately.
Research & Supporting Evidence
The Influence Graph and its four-layer view are original ERM Advisory concepts, part of the Organizational Intelligence System. The research on informal networks, connectors, and decision-making cited above is drawn from the primary sources below.
- Krackhardt & Hanson, “Informal Networks: The Company Behind the Chart,” Harvard Business Review (1993). Much of the real work in any company runs through informal networks of advice, trust, and communication that cut across the formal chart, and understanding them reveals an organization the boxes and lines never show.
- Cross & Prusak, “The People Who Make Organizations Go—or Stop,” Harvard Business Review (2002). A small number of central connectors carry a disproportionate share of an informal network, and an organization depends on them more than its chart ever shows.
- Rogers & Blenko (Bain & Company), “Who Has the D? How Clear Decision Roles Enhance Organizational Performance,” Harvard Business Review (2006). Performance suffers most where it is unclear who actually decides, because formal authority and real decision-making routinely come apart.
- McKinsey & Company, “Harnessing the Power of Informal Employee Networks” (2007). Formal structures explain little about how day-to-day work actually gets done. Much of it flows through informal networks, where people become hubs because of what they know rather than where they sit.
Conclusion: Understand the Organization You Actually Joined
Every new leader is handed a map on the first day and told it is the organization. It is not. It is the organization's picture of its own authority: useful, necessary, and quiet about much of what shapes whether you will succeed. The real organization is the one that relies on certain people, holds itself together through a handful of connectors, keeps its knowledge in unexpected places, and forms its decisions in ways the process never captures. That is something you have to come to understand yourself.
The good news is that you do not need anything separate to do it. The conversations you had to understand the business already showed you how it is wired, if you listened for who and not just what. Set that understanding beside the chart you were given, pay attention to where the two differ, and hold the whole thing to a simple purpose: understand the organization in order to strengthen it. Do that, and you stop navigating by a picture of how things are supposed to work and start moving through the organization as it actually is. Understand the business before you change it. Understanding how it really works is a large part of what that means.