Your network is bigger than you think
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Your network is bigger than you think

Interconnectedness feels good emotionally, but professionally it is limiting because the same information recycles through your local network of like-minded friends. If a close friend or ally knows about a job opportunity, you probably already do too. That’s why the breadth and reach of your network is valuable.

When thinking about how to expand your connections, remember the times you’ve met someone and discovered you know people in common. The clerk at the local hardware store once hiked through Yosemite with your brother-in-law. Your new girlfriend went to grad school with your boss’s wife. A new client’s kid goes to the same school as yours. “It’s a small world,” we say after such realizations.

But is the world actually that small?

In 1967, Psychologist Stanley Milgram and his student Jeffrey Travers conducted a famous study in which they asked a couple hundred people in Nebraska to mail a letter to someone they knew personally who might in turn know a target stockbroker in Massachusetts. On average, it took six different stops before it showed up at the stockbroker’s home or office in Massachusetts. It’s this study that birthed the six degrees of separation theory, the idea that every human being on the planet is connected to every other via no more than about six intermediary acquaintances. Subsequent studies in the digital age have borne out Milgram’s finding, also landing on the figure of six degrees.

The practical implications for the startup of you are significant. Suppose you want to become a doctor and would like to meet a premier surgeon in your field of interest. The good news is that you know that you are at most only six degrees away from her. The bad news is that asking one good friend to forward an email and hoping that five or six email forwards later the email will arrive at the orthopedic surgeon’s in-box is neither efficient nor reliable. I’m a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of...” doesn’t quite carry enough heft to open doors.

Academically, the six degrees of separation theory is correct, but for meeting people who can help you professionally, three degrees of separation is what matters. When you’re introduced to a second- or third-degree connection, at least one person in an introduction chain personally knows the origin or target person. Say you’re trying to connect with Amy, and the path to get to her is: You → Charlie → Blake → Amy. You’re three degrees away from Amy. Charlie and Blake are in the middle, and both of them know either you or Amy—the two people who are trying to connect. That’s how trust is preserved. If one additional degree of separation is added, a person in the middle of the chain will know neither you nor Amy, and thus will have no stake in making sure the introduction goes smoothly. After all, why would a person bother to introduce a total stranger (even if that stranger is a friend of a friend of a friend) to another total stranger?

So, the extended network that’s available to you professionally doesn’t contain the roughly seven billion other humans on the planet who sit six degrees away. But it does contain all the people who sit two or three degrees away, because they are the people you can reach by means of an introduction. This is a large group. Suppose you have forty friends, and assume that each friend has thirty-five other friends in turn, and each of those friends of friends has forty-five unique friends of their own. If you do the math (40 x 35 x 45), that’s 63,000 people you can reach via an introduction.

A person with 170 connections on LinkedIn is actually at the center of a professional network that’s more than two million people strong. The world may be small, but your network isn’t. Now you know why one of LinkedIn’s early marketing taglines was: your network is bigger than you think. It is!

The value and strength of your network are not represented by the number of people in your contacts. What matters are your alliances, the strength and diversity of your trust connections, the freshness of the information flowing through your network, the breadth of your friendlies, and the ease with which you can reach your second-or third-degree connections.

And remember to nurture the network you’re building. Your career lives or dies on your being helpful and generous with the people whom you depend on and who depend on you.

Please share in the comments section: What are some ways you’ve cultivated new connections?

Text adapted from my book with Ben Casnocha: The Startup of You: Adapt, Take Risks, Grow Your Network, and Transform Your Career (Currency, an imprint of Random House, 2022).

Robert E. Lehman

Customer Focused🔹️Systems Thinker🔹️EQ🔹️Servant & Clinical Leader🔹️Quality Care🔹️Registered Nurse🔹️Medical Freedom🔹️Process/Quality Improvement🔹️Change Mgmt🔹️Strategist🔹️Teams🔹️Skeptic🔹️Perfectly Imperfect

1y

To the people who make up my network here at LinkedIn: #ThankYou.

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Anurag Bansal

Managing Director @ 13D Research & Strategy | Author, Thought Leader

1y

This is great. Super insightful.

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Kerry Filkin

Building a place where creativity, sustainability and positive impact meet.

1y

The math is impressive, but often forgets the human element. I can't tell you how many times I have cautioned accountants and analysts (with varying degrees of success) to look at the story BEHIND the numbers before drawing conclusions or making decisions. Just having a large LinkedIn network doesn't mean that your network contains large numbers of potential customer, business partners, or future employers either, or people who can hook you up with those people. I have seen too many fooled into spending big $$ by so-called social media experts into believing a big audience is as useful as a 'qualified' audience, only to end up with massive networks of people who may never do any kind of business with them. And nothing to qualify shared values, interests or goals. Nothing to suggest they are someone you would WANT to introduce to someone in your network that you do value your relationship with. And credibility with your 1st level network is too valuable to damage. Regardless of size, how 'leveragable' your network is depends largely on the quality of the people in it and the quality of your interactions with them. But remember this - being "helpful and friendly" in order to get what you want isn't empathic; it's self-serving.

Wendy Alexander

I help job seekers, career changers and midlife women desiring balance & support to land their dream jobs, easily change careers, confidently ace interviews and get to love Mondays again ⇰ PM Me To Start Now

1y

And you want to work with good people; why would you want to work with someone you don't get on with? When you find someone through your network, the chances of them being a jerk are pretty close to zero—great math on this article.

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Kampamba Mungulube

Co-Founder at Zyuka Food Suppliers

1y

Very insightful, much appreciate it. I love it Reid Hoffman

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