reading Richard Florida's book, Who's your city? has pointed me to a few interesting ideas for further research. One such thot is the theory of "the strength of weak ties."
In research done by Mark Granovetter, he found that people actually find jobs through their numerous weak ties, rather than our fewer strong ones. Proximity to total strangers is more important than connections to lifelong friends, when it comes to new ideas, information and opportunities. With our close friends we mostly travel in the same circles, know the same people, frequent the same places and hear about the same opportunities. Weak ties are more numerous and take less effort to maintain. They introduce a bit of chaos into the equation, which more often than not is the key to identifying new opportunities and ideas.
One premise of the theory is that while my 30 friends may not know who you are from a hole in the ground, that fact that I know you and trust you, means that they are willing and interested to listen to something that you might have to say, when they connect with you on some random occasion. or if they connect with someone who knows you, who they realize knows me... well you get the idea...
we do this all the time in varieties of ways, of course. but we still hear the suggestion that the stronger the personal relationship, the better. except, we can only do that well with a limited number of people. maybe, as leadership-types, we need to be more intentional in connecting our weak ties (acquaintances) with one another, rather than hoping that we could ever maintain all those relationships, meaningfully. And maybe we will learn something new, too.
--reminds me of Eric Hoffer's "The Ordeal of Change"
--and some of our networking efforts that seem so frail at times yet
can produce. dwy
Posted by: David Yardy | June 02, 2010 at 02:23 PM
What a great insight and, as I reflect in my own life and surrounds, it's absolutely true. Thanks for pointing to this, Dan.
Posted by: Laurie Barber | May 24, 2010 at 10:16 AM