Case in point: Wells Fargo's cross-selling scandal (2011–2016) is a case study in pathological informal power operating underneath formal structure. The formal incentive system — aggressive sales quotas for retail bankers — created informal pressure that no formal policy could contain. Branch managers developed informal systems to meet quotas: opening accounts without customer knowledge, transferring funds between accounts to meet activity requirements, and creating synthetic customer relationships to report as "cross-sold." Informal enforcement was brutal: managers who pushed back on quotas were marginalized or fired. The informal power structure had evolved to enforce behaviors the formal system nominally prohibited. When the OCC and CFPB investigation concluded, 5,300 employees had been fired, $185 million in fines had been paid, and the CEO had resigned. No org chart showed this problem. The informal map did.

You have a new strategy. The leadership team has aligned. The all-hands message has been sent. Then nothing happens. Or something happens slowly, partially, and with resistance no one wants to name.

This is usually a power problem.

Not always a sinister one. Informal power can be constructive: the trusted operator who unblocks work, the principal engineer whose judgment prevents bad launches, the customer success leader who knows which customers will explode. It can also be pathological: the hidden veto holder preserving turf, the executive whisper network, the function that kills change by starving it of attention.

If you redesign without understanding this layer, the org chart changes and the old power system keeps operating underneath it.

How to Map It Ethically

Do not rely on interviews alone. Triangulate.

Interviews tell you the official story and the socially safe story. Observation shows you what happens under pressure. Use both, and do not turn the exercise into a gossip map.

Track initiatives. Follow three or four real workstreams: a launch, an enterprise deal, an incident response, a budget request. Who accelerates them? Who slows them? Who gets pulled in when things are stuck?

Map the no network. Who can stop work without being the formal owner? Why can they stop it — expertise, risk, history, executive trust, control of resources?

Map the coalition paths. When change succeeds, who made it acceptable? When change fails, who withheld support? Resistance is often rational. Understand the threatened interest before labeling it bad attitude.

Identify bridges. Who connects otherwise disconnected groups? These people often carry context the formal structure fails to move.

Ethical navigation matters. Do not manipulate informal leaders with fake consultation. Do not punish people for having influence. Do not confuse disagreement with sabotage. The goal is to understand the political economy of the change: whose power, status, budget, headcount, and promotion path are affected.

Acting on the Map

Mapping informal power is diagnosis. Here is what the map is actually for.

Incorporate constructive informal leaders into the design. The trusted operator who unblocks work, the principal engineer whose judgment prevents bad launches, the customer success leader who knows which renewals are at risk — these people have operational leverage the formal structure does not credit. Rather than working around them, make their role explicit. Give them decision rights, escalation ownership, or coordination authority that matches what they already do informally. This removes the tribute system where other teams depend on personal relationships instead of structural clarity. It also removes the career risk these people carry: they are often the load-bearing wall of the informal organization but have no formal authority to protect them when their judgment is overridden.

Contain pathological informal power. The hidden veto holder who preserves turf by slowing work they do not own, the executive whisper network that shapes decisions before they reach the room, the function that kills change by starving it of airtime — these are structural problems, not personality problems. Naming them helps. Structural solutions work better: move decision rights that are currently held informally into explicit operating protocol, so the informal veto has no formal mechanism to operate through. If a senior engineer is informally blocking architecture decisions without accountability, give formal architecture authority to a group with published decision rights and an escalation path. If a VP is informally killing initiatives by controlling executive access, make the initiative review process explicit and time-boxed. The goal is not to eliminate informal influence. It is to prevent informal power from operating as a veto on decisions that should follow a formal path.

Redesign formal structures to reduce dependence on hidden power. If a particular informal role is load-bearing — a senior operator who always gets things through, an executive EA who shapes what leadership sees — ask why the formal structure does not do that work. Usually the answer is that authority, information, or incentives are misaligned. Fixing that alignment removes the need for the informal workaround. If the VP of Sales has to personally lobby the CEO every quarter to get product commitments, the informal power exists because the product planning process does not handle enterprise priorities transparently. Fix the planning process and the informal lobbying becomes unnecessary.

Build a transition plan for the people involved. Informal leaders often become informal because they have been doing necessary work the formal structure was not doing. When you redesign the formal structure, those people may lose scope, influence, or reason to exist in their current form. Do not surprise them. Bring them into the design early enough that their expertise shapes the new structure. Give them explicit authority in the new model where their expertise is genuinely needed. Make the transition explicit rather than letting the old informal role fade while the person is still carrying it.

The informal map reveals what the formal structure is failing to do. Use it to fix the formal structure, not to build a shadow government.