Social Networks · Change · Decisions
I study how decisions really move through an organisation.
I came to networks through water. For more than two decades I worked inside water governance in British Columbia, the meetings, the boards, the long negotiations between people who did not always agree on what the water was for. Over time I noticed that the formal record, the agendas and the minutes, explained almost nothing about how decisions actually happened. The real story was in the relationships.
So I went and measured them. My doctoral research applied social network analysis to a fifty-year record of regional water-governance meetings, mapping how influence and decision-making moved through one institution across half a century. What it showed, again and again, is that the people an organisation thinks are central often are not, and the connections that hold everything together are usually the ones nobody is watching.
That is the work I bring to other rooms now. The patterns are already there, in water, in governance, and in any organisation that runs on relationships. The job is making them visible, so leaders can act on what is real instead of what is assumed.
Why "Weak Ties"
The name encodes the thesis.
The name comes from a 1973 paper by the sociologist Mark Granovetter, "The Strength of Weak Ties," one of the most cited ideas in social science. The argument is counterintuitive. Your strong ties, close friends, family, the people you see every day, tend to know what you already know, because you all move in the same circle. Your weak ties, the acquaintances and casual contacts, reach into circles you do not, so they are the ones who carry new information across the gaps. Granovetter found that people more often landed jobs through these weaker connections than through their closest ones.
That gap-crossing is the point. Weak ties are the bridges in a network, and information, influence, and change travel across bridges. The quiet person who connects two groups that would otherwise never talk often shapes a decision more than whoever sits at the top of the chart. You cannot see this on an org chart. You can only see it by mapping the relationships themselves, which is what social network analysis does.
That is what this work is about: how decisions actually get made, and how change actually spreads. Not the formal version on paper, but the real version that runs through people and the ties between them. I have spent twenty years tracing these networks. The examples come from water and many other settings, but the lesson is general: if you want to understand a decision or a change, follow the ties, especially the weak ones.
It all feels like noise, until you trace the signal.
Credentials
- Doctorate of Social Science, Royal Roads University, 2023
- Professional Agrologist (P.Ag. #2862)
- Adjunct Professor, UBC Okanagan (EESC 301 Limnology, EESC 402 Water Management)
- 20+ years in senior project management and water governance
- Based in Kelowna, British Columbia
View full CV → Publications → Water tools for local government →
Press kit
Lift-ready bios in three lengths, for organisers to copy into a programme.
One line
Dr. Nelson Jatel is a social network analyst who helps boards and audiences see the hidden relationships behind their decisions.
50 words
Dr. Nelson Jatel is a social network analyst and keynote speaker based in Kelowna, British Columbia. He traces how decisions actually get made and how change really spreads, through the networks behind them, in water and many other settings. He holds a Doctorate of Social Science and is a Professional Agrologist.
150 words
Dr. Nelson Jatel is a social network analyst and keynote speaker based in Kelowna, British Columbia. For more than two decades he has mapped how decisions actually get made and how change really spreads, the hidden relationships behind them, turning complex relationship data into decisions leaders can act on.
His doctoral research applied social network analysis to a fifty-year record of regional water-governance meetings, mapping how influence and decision-making actually move through an institution. He brings that same lens to corporate and government audiences: who really decides, where a network is brittle, and how informal ties shape formal outcomes.
Nelson holds a Doctorate of Social Science from Royal Roads University and is a Professional Agrologist (P.Ag.). He speaks at conferences, board retreats, and annual general meetings, and produces The Signal · Weak Ties, on the hidden networks behind how we decide and how we change.
Personal views only. Not representative of any organisation, employer, association, or affiliation.