Author, professor, and organizational psychologist David Burkus leads a deep dive into the power of networking, exploring weak and dormant ties, structural holes in networks, social capital, navigating "multiplexity", and the TRUTH behind Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
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Episode Transcript
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Host (00:30):
David Burkus is here. His book's called Friend of a
Friend. So David, welcome backto the show.
David Burkus (00:35):
Oh, thank you so much for having me.
Host (00:37):
Well, let's do this. So tell me so friend of a friend.
It's based on the science ofhuman behavior and not on rote
networking advice. So what doesthat mean exactly?
David Burkus (00:47):
This is not a new topic, right? We know this is
important. We know we've heardthe phrases, your network is
your net worth, right? And allof those sort of phrases. And
yet, most of what we'reconsuming is what I would call
networking advice, right? Andit's, someone's advice on here's
how to give the perfect elevatorpitch, or how to introduce two
people. And it's good stuff. Imean, some of it, you know, How
to Win Friends and InfluencePeople, is a perennial. It's
(01:08):
classic, right? So it's goodstuff, but it's usually it's one
person's advice, right? And thatone person can sometimes be
different than you, that someone person can have different
experiences than you, etc. And alot of people take that advice
and then they go to the event,or they go to that thing where
they're trying to meet newpeople. They try and put that
advice into practice, and thenthey feel weird and sleazy and
inauthentic and well, like Nowonder you feel inauthentic.
(01:30):
You're trying to be someoneelse, you know, by doing their
thing. So I'm trying to take alittle bit different track,
which is for the last 50 or 60years, scientists from a variety
of fields, mathematics, but alsobehavioral science, behavioral
science, behavior, economics,sociology, etc, have been
studying how networks actuallywork, how, if A is connected to
B and B is connected to C, howare c and A's relationship, and
(01:51):
what, what's going on in sort ofthe broader network. And so the
the big ideas, I think mostpeople need to learn less of
someone else's advice and needto learn more about the network
that they're already a part of,and get a better map on that and
then respond accordingly. Imean, and network is not
something you have, andnetworking is not necessarily
something you do, like youalready exist inside of a
network. There's one network,7.4 billion people strong and
(02:14):
counting. But then whateverindustry you're trying to sell
to or be a part of, whatevercommunity that you're engaged in
that's already a network. Andthe better strategy is to figure
out, Where am I in this, who amI already connected to? Who do I
need to be connected to? How canI chart a path from from me to
them, etc? And when you when youstart to do that, it looks a
whole lot less like runningaround trying to just add people
(02:35):
to your contacts on LinkedIn oremail addresses under your
phone, and looks a whole lotmore like mapping the community
that you're a part of, so youcan start providing value to
that community and letting thatvalue come back to you. And you
know, a lot of us, when we thinkabout growing our network, we
immediately go to the sort ofstrangers approach, right? I'm
gonna go try and meet newpeople, whether that's at an
event or whether that is coldcalling, whatever is. I'm gonna
(02:57):
try to meet new people, asopposed to knowing that inside
of the network that we'realready a part of, there are
people that we know but wehaven't talked to in a while. We
call these in network sciencethe weak or dormant ties.
There's people that are warmreferrals. They're one degree of
separation out from us, and wecan be introduced to them. In
fact, that probably the funnieststudy in the entire book is
looking at Is there truth behindSix Degrees of Kevin Bacon and
(03:20):
so and what happens is peopletrain and connect, try and
connect one actor to anotheractor through Kevin Bacon in six
steps or less. And it'spossible, it's also possible to
do it without Kevin Bacon. Infact, there's actually nothing
special about Kevin Bacon. He'sa fluke of history in terms of
being connected. He's the 669thmost connected person in
Hollywood. But it's good newsfor all of us. Right? What it
(03:41):
suggests is that if you thinkabout you're not you may not be
in Hollywood, but if you thinkabout your industry or your
geography as a network, youdon't have to have this
incredible, super connectorsnetwork. You're already probably
one or two degrees of separationout from everyone that you need
to meet and get to know. It'sjust a matter of knowing what is
my path to them, who couldintroduce me to them, etc.
(04:02):
That's that's a much betterstrategy than thinking about
like, Okay, I need to just addas many new contacts to my to my
app as possible. It's much moreabout going, Okay, I need, I
know, I need these types ofpeople. How can I get better
connected to them?
Host (04:15):
Yeah, is there anything specific that we should be doing
with that information, or is itjust more of like it's about the
mindset shift of going justnurture, spend time nurturing
what you have, and work that notbuilding a new network?
David Burkus (04:30):
So I would say that's the first part. The
second is, as you're nurturingthe connections you already
have, I coach a lot of people toget in the practice of asking
the question, Who do you know inblank, with blank being whatever
industry sector segment that youwant to get to know more of now
that's different than what mostpeople will do if they find out.
Usually, they'll wait till theyfind out that they have a
connection to that one person,that amazing person that's going
(04:52):
to fill their quota for thequarter, or going to introduce
them to the Hollywood executivethat's going to get them in a
feature film. Right? We're. Whenwe think about that, maybe we
even like we don't even know weLinkedIn stock, and then it
tells us we have thisconnection. Then we go to that
one person and we beg for anintroduction. A better approach
is to sort of systematically beasking contacts we already have,
Hey, who do you know? In blank,whatever that segment is, and
(05:15):
let them come up with not justone person, but a list of names.
Usually, that list of names isgoing to be people they would be
comfortable introducing you to,and when you're doing that to
five or six different people andthe same two or three names come
up, that's a strong signal, interms of the network, that
that's the right person for you,and that that person is also
probably different than the onethat you thought you needed to
get connected to. I mean, ifthere's 7.4 billion people in
(05:37):
the world, the likelihood thatthe person you think is going to
transform your business is alsothe person that really is going
to transform your business. It'spretty small, so it's better to
have a very open edge mentalityof I'm trying to explore the
fringes of the network in itstotality, and then we can figure
out who are the right people toget connected to.
Host (05:53):
Yeah. You talk about networking events. There is a
term that you introduce calledmultiplexity.
David Burkus (06:01):
Yeah, yeah. And the way to think about network
Host (06:01):
Uh huh. There's a concept again here in the book that you
meetings is sort of like addingfuel to the fire of doing this
warm lead thing anyway, right?If you go, you're going to
accelerate that. But what a lotof people do is they run around
and they ask, in my opinion, thewrong question they ask. So what
do you do? Which it sounds like?It's a great question, because
it sounds like it cuts out ofthe small talk and gets to the
heart of it. But there's a 12. Icall it a $12 word,
(06:22):
multiplexity. And what it is innetwork science is it's
essentially a realization thateven though a might know B,
there are multiple differentways in which people can know
each other. So when we have justone thing in common or one
reason to connect, we call thata uniplex tie, right? So when
it's just work related, that's auniplex tie, if we work
together, but our kids go to thesame elementary school, and we
also see each other at the gym.That's a multiplex tie. There's
(06:44):
multiple different contexts inwhich we see each other, and the
research strongly suggests thatyou will build a better and
deeper relationship with someonefaster if you're building
multiplex ties. So we go back tothis question. So what do you
do? The problem with that is,you're at a networking event,
especially you're in a situationwhere the context is sending a
strong signal that we'resupposed to talk about work. And
then when you ask, so what doyou do? You send a strong signal
(07:07):
that that's what I'm interestedin talking to. The context is
going to shift your conversationto work eventually. Anyway, so I
advise people lead with a littlebit different question, right?
Something that's open ended,something that they can explore.
So this could be anything thatfeels natural but explores some
other dimensions. So whatexcites you right now? Where did
you grow up? I actually like toask who's your favorite
superhero, just because you canlearn a lot about somebody when
(07:29):
talking about superhero, butanything that explores them from
another aspect. I mean, humansare multifaceted creatures,
right? And the way that youbuild a deeper relationship,
stronger with them is is to bemulti fascinated by the
different elements of them. Youget to know them better on
multiple different levels. Andyou do that, I think, by
starting with a little bitdifferent question. It might
sound like small talk, it mightsound trivial, but you're
(07:51):
exploring other possible avenuesand things you might have in
common. And when you come backto work, you will have a deeper
relationship, a stronger levelof trust, etc, than if you just
focused in on work relatedthings. The key is you also have
to be legitimately interested inthe other person, right? Which
is part of being a decent humanbeing, but, but if you are, then
there's no reason to stay withinthose guide rails that we think
(08:11):
we're supposed to do of the sowhat do you do? Let's exchange
business cards. Let's only thinkabout each other in a work
context. The other thing is thatas you go throughout your whole
the longitude of your wholecareer, you might actually find
that your personal friends, thepeople that are connected to you
for sort of non work reasons,end up becoming work
relationships. And in friend ofa friend, we tell the story of
Whitney Johnson, who's abrilliant thinker, a good friend
(08:33):
of mine. Whitney's biggest sortof thing, before she went as a
writer, speaker, thinker, wasshe worked for an investment
firm called Rose Park advisorsstarted by Clayton Christensen,
the brilliant mind behinddisruptive innovation. How did
she get that job? Well, she wasworking in Wall Street, but she
got that job because she wasserving on a committee at church
with Clay Christensen. He got tosee how she worked in that
capacity. And that was thecapacity that made him say,
(08:55):
like, you know what, I want youto lead my firm when I started
right, which is not you wouldn'tthink that at all, like no one's
job. Advice is, go startthinking about the people that
you know from church. But thetruth is, people are multi
dimensional, and you have noidea how those connections are
going to pay off in the future.So be generally interested in
all of the facets of someone,and it will not only pay off
because you get to know thembetter and are a better human
(09:17):
being, it'll probably pay off inthe long run, even in your
career as well. If a knows B andB knows C, C is more likely to
know a. In reality, too much.Transitivity is actually a bad
thing, like when you have toomany of the same, close
connections, then you all kindof think alike, act alike.
Everybody knows each other, sothat even the introductions and
referrals you're going to getare very similar to you. So
transitivity can actually be abad thing. We need some of it
(09:39):
because we have to have closeconnections, but we also have to
monitor what's my how much timeam I spending with the same few
people versus with the peoplethat are further out in my
network that I'm sort ofrewarming those ties?
talk about; structural holes.
David Burkus (09:55):
Yeah. So this is probably one of my favorite
insights from the whole world ofnetwork. Science. Structural
holes refers to networksbetween. We just talked about
transitivity. That leads to sortof clustering. People tend to
cluster off, right? So theycluster off by industry. They
cluster off by ideology, likepolitical ideology. They cluster
for a bunch of differentreasons. And what that creates
over time is it's almost likeplanets and space, right?
(10:17):
There's Earth and there's Mars,and in between there's nothing.
Well, sometimes there's themoon, but you know what I mean?
Like, it creates a gap, an emptyspace in the network. And it
turns out that the people whobridge that gap, who connect two
communities to each other, whoallow who become sort of an
information flow between them,those are the people that end up
creating the most value for bothof those communities, and the
people who generate sort of themost value for themselves,
(10:39):
because they're seen as thatconnector. And this is, you
know, if you think about this ina rudimentary level, we know
this in the sense of, like, ifyou work in sales, for example,
you have the group of salespeople. That's a cluster, you
sort of community of practice.Then you have the target market
that you're you're working in.That's another but do we ever
think about, okay, what are theother clusters that are kind of
connected to that target market,right? And some, some industries
(11:00):
do this really instinctively.Real estate agents, for example,
are great at knowing that theyalso need to be connected to the
title company and the mortgageoffice of people. But the same
thing works for sort of almostall of it. I cut my teeth my
first job out of school, I was apharmaceutical sales rep, right?
And one of the advantages that Ihad was that there's drug reps
and then there's doctors, butthere's also nurses, there's
(11:21):
medical device reps, there's acouple different clusters that
if I can start to bridge a lotof those structural holes, I can
create a lot more value foreverybody. And that spills over
into my own career as well. Youknow, it's, it's social capital,
right? This is a term thatdescribes the value when a
community is well,interconnected versus
geographically dispersed, butalso it's the value that the
person doing that spills overinto that person doing the
(11:42):
connecting, right? And, youknow, I think the big takeaway,
like TAKEAWAY NUMBER ONE, isthat, how can you be that
person, right? What is thecommunity that doesn't exist,
that needs to exist that wouldhelp your career, help your
clients, help people that aredoing something similar to you?
You've got to go build that onthe small scale as well. Because
one of the things that we knowfrom the research on structural
holes and on social capital isthat there is not a spillover
effect, right? If you're thebroker, there's a huge value
(12:04):
that's created for bothcommunities and for you. If
you're one degree of separationfrom that broker, none of that
value spills over, right? Itdoesn't affect your career. Just
because you know the personconnecting, you have to be the
person connecting. Where can Ibuild that little bit of a
community? Where can I connectto communities? Where can I be a
broker, even in the small scale?Because it's not enough to just
rely on other people to alwaysbe giving you those
introductions, but you have tobe that person that's actually
(12:26):
connecting. And everybody can.This is not an introvert versus
extrovert thing. This is not aHow long have I been in my
career thing? Everybody canbegin to pay attention to the
network that exists and start toconnect groups and communities
and even just individual peoplecloser together that creates
value for that network, and itwill spill over to you in turn.
What I love about the termsocial capital too is it works
(12:46):
just like any other capital. Itcompounds over time, so you've
got to make the littleinvestments in it. You can't
just start withdrawing from itright away, like I can't buy a
mutual fund and then go I'd liketo withdraw $100,000 from it.
Doesn't work that way. I have toactually have invested that
amount of money first before Ican do it. And networks, you
know, they work the exact sameway. And really, I mean, if I'm,
if I'm going to be a little bitbraggadocious, this is the big
(13:09):
theory of the book too, whichis, let's try and connect these
two communities, the people thatstudy networks and the people
who need to know how to networkbetter. It's not just advice.
It's, hey, I'm just trying to bethat connector to, well, here's
the evidence based communitythat backs up all of the things
that you're
Host (13:21):
Yeah. How do you know, like you said, Kevin Bacon is
the 669 connected person inHollywood. What's the process
that y'all are doing to come upwith something like that?
David Burkus (13:32):
Okay, so, so in that, in that specific
situation, the way that theresearchers did it was they
basically took the data fromInternet Movie Database and
basically were saying, If youacted together in a movie,
that's a connection, right? Andso they can explore it's a very
sort of big data thing, right?Actually, Facebook, by the way,
does the exact same thing. Iknow we're in a bit of a data
privacy and Facebook, but theyactually, almost every year
(13:52):
release a study that shows,based on the number of
connections you have, like, howmany bridges does it take to
connect everyone in the Facebookcommunity? And while it might be
six degrees of separation forthe 7.4 billion people who who
are out there, for the 2 billionthat have a Facebook account,
it's actually only fourintroductions. So it sort of
shrinks it. So you look at itwhen we're saying Kevin Bacon is
669 it's because of the sheersort of number of connections
(14:13):
that he has. He ranks 669there's, there was a, I think
the most connected one, if Iremember right, was just sort of
an actor that had been in abunch of different genres, but
not as a feature actor. So justsort of rotating around, but
you're building all of thoserelationships. The thing that's
most fascinating to me is thatyou don't necessarily have to be
that number one person. Evensomeone with as terrible a
network as Kevin Bacon cancreate all the value in the
(14:35):
world from connecting multipledifferent people and have that
affect his career too. I mean,the guy's actually been in a
visa ad about Six Degrees ofKevin Macon, right? All because
of this thing that justhappened, even though he wasn't
the most connected. So everyonehas this potential. You don't
have to be that superextroverted guy who knows how to
work the room type person. Weall have that potential. We just
need to pay a little bit moreattention to the network that's
(14:56):
around us and then respondaccordingly. Actually, we dive
into some of the research onreally most of these online
tools, whether it be LinkedIn orFacebook or Twitter or what have
you, most of them are onlyreally effective to the extent
that they're a supplement foryour existing offline network,
not a replacement for right? Soit's great to do it. It's great
to jump into LinkedIn groups orFacebook groups and interact.
You also have to sort of befinding ways to make that
(15:18):
connection a bit more personalbefore it gets really valuable
there. We all know those peoplethat spend a little bit too much
time on it and not enough time,like doing whatever the hard
work of getting in front ofpeople is, we tell ourselves
that, oh, I'm building mynetwork. I'm just saying, like,
No, you're not. You're justposting articles on LinkedIn and
calling that network and like,That's not. That's a great
supplement to help you withconnections, but it is not a
(15:39):
replacement for the old schoolways, and it's interesting in
the age of technology and allthis data, that that's what we find.
Host (15:45):
If somebody's out there listening right now, is in the
spirit of the action catalystpodcast, what is the first thing
that you would have them takeaction on, in terms of
implementing everything thatthey are are learning here and
what we're talking about?
David Burkus (15:59):
The first thing I would probably want them to do
is in line with a little bit ofwhat we talked about, of what we
talked about with the researchon weak ties, which is, I want
you to think of five people thatyou haven't talked to in six
months to a year, and I want youto do the work of reaching back
out to them, engaging them in aconversation. You have my
permission to wait till you finda relevant reason to do it, but
you don't have my permission toignore making the list. Get that
(16:20):
list made, put it in front ofyou, and when that you start to
think about them, or you read anarticle that they'd be
interested in, or you see thempost something online about what
they're up to, that's yourreason. That's your ramp to go
back and reconnect with them andfocus in on that first, because
it's more comfortable, but it'shugely beneficial to not just
you the overall network.
Host (16:36):
All right, my friends, David Burkus is who you're
listening to. DavidBurkus.comand we wish you all the best.
David Burkus (16:41):
Oh, thank you so much, and thank you so much for
having me and for sharing mewith your community. I really
appreciate it.
David Burkus is here. His book's called Friend of a
Friend. So David, welcome backto the show.
David Burkus (00:35):
Oh, thank you so much for having me.
Host (00:37):
Well, let's do this. So tell me so friend of a friend.
It's based on the science ofhuman behavior and not on rote
networking advice. So what doesthat mean exactly?
David Burkus (00:47):
This is not a new topic, right? We know this is
important. We know we've heardthe phrases, your network is
your net worth, right? And allof those sort of phrases. And
yet, most of what we'reconsuming is what I would call
networking advice, right? Andit's, someone's advice on here's
how to give the perfect elevatorpitch, or how to introduce two
people. And it's good stuff. Imean, some of it, you know, How
to Win Friends and InfluencePeople, is a perennial. It's
(01:08):
classic, right? So it's goodstuff, but it's usually it's one
person's advice, right? And thatone person can sometimes be
different than you, that someone person can have different
experiences than you, etc. And alot of people take that advice
and then they go to the event,or they go to that thing where
they're trying to meet newpeople. They try and put that
advice into practice, and thenthey feel weird and sleazy and
inauthentic and well, like Nowonder you feel inauthentic.
(01:30):
You're trying to be someoneelse, you know, by doing their
thing. So I'm trying to take alittle bit different track,
which is for the last 50 or 60years, scientists from a variety
of fields, mathematics, but alsobehavioral science, behavioral
science, behavior, economics,sociology, etc, have been
studying how networks actuallywork, how, if A is connected to
B and B is connected to C, howare c and A's relationship, and
(01:51):
what, what's going on in sort ofthe broader network. And so the
the big ideas, I think mostpeople need to learn less of
someone else's advice and needto learn more about the network
that they're already a part of,and get a better map on that and
then respond accordingly. Imean, and network is not
something you have, andnetworking is not necessarily
something you do, like youalready exist inside of a
network. There's one network,7.4 billion people strong and
(02:14):
counting. But then whateverindustry you're trying to sell
to or be a part of, whatevercommunity that you're engaged in
that's already a network. Andthe better strategy is to figure
out, Where am I in this, who amI already connected to? Who do I
need to be connected to? How canI chart a path from from me to
them, etc? And when you when youstart to do that, it looks a
whole lot less like runningaround trying to just add people
(02:35):
to your contacts on LinkedIn oremail addresses under your
phone, and looks a whole lotmore like mapping the community
that you're a part of, so youcan start providing value to
that community and letting thatvalue come back to you. And you
know, a lot of us, when we thinkabout growing our network, we
immediately go to the sort ofstrangers approach, right? I'm
gonna go try and meet newpeople, whether that's at an
event or whether that is coldcalling, whatever is. I'm gonna
(02:57):
try to meet new people, asopposed to knowing that inside
of the network that we'realready a part of, there are
people that we know but wehaven't talked to in a while. We
call these in network sciencethe weak or dormant ties.
There's people that are warmreferrals. They're one degree of
separation out from us, and wecan be introduced to them. In
fact, that probably the funnieststudy in the entire book is
looking at Is there truth behindSix Degrees of Kevin Bacon and
(03:20):
so and what happens is peopletrain and connect, try and
connect one actor to anotheractor through Kevin Bacon in six
steps or less. And it'spossible, it's also possible to
do it without Kevin Bacon. Infact, there's actually nothing
special about Kevin Bacon. He'sa fluke of history in terms of
being connected. He's the 669thmost connected person in
Hollywood. But it's good newsfor all of us. Right? What it
(03:41):
suggests is that if you thinkabout you're not you may not be
in Hollywood, but if you thinkabout your industry or your
geography as a network, youdon't have to have this
incredible, super connectorsnetwork. You're already probably
one or two degrees of separationout from everyone that you need
to meet and get to know. It'sjust a matter of knowing what is
my path to them, who couldintroduce me to them, etc.
(04:02):
That's that's a much betterstrategy than thinking about
like, Okay, I need to just addas many new contacts to my to my
app as possible. It's much moreabout going, Okay, I need, I
know, I need these types ofpeople. How can I get better
connected to them?
Host (04:15):
Yeah, is there anything specific that we should be doing
with that information, or is itjust more of like it's about the
mindset shift of going justnurture, spend time nurturing
what you have, and work that notbuilding a new network?
David Burkus (04:30):
So I would say that's the first part. The
second is, as you're nurturingthe connections you already
have, I coach a lot of people toget in the practice of asking
the question, Who do you know inblank, with blank being whatever
industry sector segment that youwant to get to know more of now
that's different than what mostpeople will do if they find out.
Usually, they'll wait till theyfind out that they have a
connection to that one person,that amazing person that's going
(04:52):
to fill their quota for thequarter, or going to introduce
them to the Hollywood executivethat's going to get them in a
feature film. Right? We're. Whenwe think about that, maybe we
even like we don't even know weLinkedIn stock, and then it
tells us we have thisconnection. Then we go to that
one person and we beg for anintroduction. A better approach
is to sort of systematically beasking contacts we already have,
Hey, who do you know? In blank,whatever that segment is, and
(05:15):
let them come up with not justone person, but a list of names.
Usually, that list of names isgoing to be people they would be
comfortable introducing you to,and when you're doing that to
five or six different people andthe same two or three names come
up, that's a strong signal, interms of the network, that
that's the right person for you,and that that person is also
probably different than the onethat you thought you needed to
get connected to. I mean, ifthere's 7.4 billion people in
(05:37):
the world, the likelihood thatthe person you think is going to
transform your business is alsothe person that really is going
to transform your business. It'spretty small, so it's better to
have a very open edge mentalityof I'm trying to explore the
fringes of the network in itstotality, and then we can figure
out who are the right people toget connected to.
Host (05:53):
Yeah. You talk about networking events. There is a
term that you introduce calledmultiplexity.
David Burkus (06:01):
Yeah, yeah. And the way to think about network
Host (06:01):
Uh huh. There's a concept again here in the book that you
meetings is sort of like addingfuel to the fire of doing this
warm lead thing anyway, right?If you go, you're going to
accelerate that. But what a lotof people do is they run around
and they ask, in my opinion, thewrong question they ask. So what
do you do? Which it sounds like?It's a great question, because
it sounds like it cuts out ofthe small talk and gets to the
heart of it. But there's a 12. Icall it a $12 word,
(06:22):
multiplexity. And what it is innetwork science is it's
essentially a realization thateven though a might know B,
there are multiple differentways in which people can know
each other. So when we have justone thing in common or one
reason to connect, we call thata uniplex tie, right? So when
it's just work related, that's auniplex tie, if we work
together, but our kids go to thesame elementary school, and we
also see each other at the gym.That's a multiplex tie. There's
(06:44):
multiple different contexts inwhich we see each other, and the
research strongly suggests thatyou will build a better and
deeper relationship with someonefaster if you're building
multiplex ties. So we go back tothis question. So what do you
do? The problem with that is,you're at a networking event,
especially you're in a situationwhere the context is sending a
strong signal that we'resupposed to talk about work. And
then when you ask, so what doyou do? You send a strong signal
(07:07):
that that's what I'm interestedin talking to. The context is
going to shift your conversationto work eventually. Anyway, so I
advise people lead with a littlebit different question, right?
Something that's open ended,something that they can explore.
So this could be anything thatfeels natural but explores some
other dimensions. So whatexcites you right now? Where did
you grow up? I actually like toask who's your favorite
superhero, just because you canlearn a lot about somebody when
(07:29):
talking about superhero, butanything that explores them from
another aspect. I mean, humansare multifaceted creatures,
right? And the way that youbuild a deeper relationship,
stronger with them is is to bemulti fascinated by the
different elements of them. Youget to know them better on
multiple different levels. Andyou do that, I think, by
starting with a little bitdifferent question. It might
sound like small talk, it mightsound trivial, but you're
(07:51):
exploring other possible avenuesand things you might have in
common. And when you come backto work, you will have a deeper
relationship, a stronger levelof trust, etc, than if you just
focused in on work relatedthings. The key is you also have
to be legitimately interested inthe other person, right? Which
is part of being a decent humanbeing, but, but if you are, then
there's no reason to stay withinthose guide rails that we think
(08:11):
we're supposed to do of the sowhat do you do? Let's exchange
business cards. Let's only thinkabout each other in a work
context. The other thing is thatas you go throughout your whole
the longitude of your wholecareer, you might actually find
that your personal friends, thepeople that are connected to you
for sort of non work reasons,end up becoming work
relationships. And in friend ofa friend, we tell the story of
Whitney Johnson, who's abrilliant thinker, a good friend
(08:33):
of mine. Whitney's biggest sortof thing, before she went as a
writer, speaker, thinker, wasshe worked for an investment
firm called Rose Park advisorsstarted by Clayton Christensen,
the brilliant mind behinddisruptive innovation. How did
she get that job? Well, she wasworking in Wall Street, but she
got that job because she wasserving on a committee at church
with Clay Christensen. He got tosee how she worked in that
capacity. And that was thecapacity that made him say,
(08:55):
like, you know what, I want youto lead my firm when I started
right, which is not you wouldn'tthink that at all, like no one's
job. Advice is, go startthinking about the people that
you know from church. But thetruth is, people are multi
dimensional, and you have noidea how those connections are
going to pay off in the future.So be generally interested in
all of the facets of someone,and it will not only pay off
because you get to know thembetter and are a better human
(09:17):
being, it'll probably pay off inthe long run, even in your
career as well. If a knows B andB knows C, C is more likely to
know a. In reality, too much.Transitivity is actually a bad
thing, like when you have toomany of the same, close
connections, then you all kindof think alike, act alike.
Everybody knows each other, sothat even the introductions and
referrals you're going to getare very similar to you. So
transitivity can actually be abad thing. We need some of it
(09:39):
because we have to have closeconnections, but we also have to
monitor what's my how much timeam I spending with the same few
people versus with the peoplethat are further out in my
network that I'm sort ofrewarming those ties?
talk about; structural holes.
David Burkus (09:55):
Yeah. So this is probably one of my favorite
insights from the whole world ofnetwork. Science. Structural
holes refers to networksbetween. We just talked about
transitivity. That leads to sortof clustering. People tend to
cluster off, right? So theycluster off by industry. They
cluster off by ideology, likepolitical ideology. They cluster
for a bunch of differentreasons. And what that creates
over time is it's almost likeplanets and space, right?
(10:17):
There's Earth and there's Mars,and in between there's nothing.
Well, sometimes there's themoon, but you know what I mean?
Like, it creates a gap, an emptyspace in the network. And it
turns out that the people whobridge that gap, who connect two
communities to each other, whoallow who become sort of an
information flow between them,those are the people that end up
creating the most value for bothof those communities, and the
people who generate sort of themost value for themselves,
(10:39):
because they're seen as thatconnector. And this is, you
know, if you think about this ina rudimentary level, we know
this in the sense of, like, ifyou work in sales, for example,
you have the group of salespeople. That's a cluster, you
sort of community of practice.Then you have the target market
that you're you're working in.That's another but do we ever
think about, okay, what are theother clusters that are kind of
connected to that target market,right? And some, some industries
(11:00):
do this really instinctively.Real estate agents, for example,
are great at knowing that theyalso need to be connected to the
title company and the mortgageoffice of people. But the same
thing works for sort of almostall of it. I cut my teeth my
first job out of school, I was apharmaceutical sales rep, right?
And one of the advantages that Ihad was that there's drug reps
and then there's doctors, butthere's also nurses, there's
(11:21):
medical device reps, there's acouple different clusters that
if I can start to bridge a lotof those structural holes, I can
create a lot more value foreverybody. And that spills over
into my own career as well. Youknow, it's, it's social capital,
right? This is a term thatdescribes the value when a
community is well,interconnected versus
geographically dispersed, butalso it's the value that the
person doing that spills overinto that person doing the
(11:42):
connecting, right? And, youknow, I think the big takeaway,
like TAKEAWAY NUMBER ONE, isthat, how can you be that
person, right? What is thecommunity that doesn't exist,
that needs to exist that wouldhelp your career, help your
clients, help people that aredoing something similar to you?
You've got to go build that onthe small scale as well. Because
one of the things that we knowfrom the research on structural
holes and on social capital isthat there is not a spillover
effect, right? If you're thebroker, there's a huge value
(12:04):
that's created for bothcommunities and for you. If
you're one degree of separationfrom that broker, none of that
value spills over, right? Itdoesn't affect your career. Just
because you know the personconnecting, you have to be the
person connecting. Where can Ibuild that little bit of a
community? Where can I connectto communities? Where can I be a
broker, even in the small scale?Because it's not enough to just
rely on other people to alwaysbe giving you those
introductions, but you have tobe that person that's actually
(12:26):
connecting. And everybody can.This is not an introvert versus
extrovert thing. This is not aHow long have I been in my
career thing? Everybody canbegin to pay attention to the
network that exists and start toconnect groups and communities
and even just individual peoplecloser together that creates
value for that network, and itwill spill over to you in turn.
What I love about the termsocial capital too is it works
(12:46):
just like any other capital. Itcompounds over time, so you've
got to make the littleinvestments in it. You can't
just start withdrawing from itright away, like I can't buy a
mutual fund and then go I'd liketo withdraw $100,000 from it.
Doesn't work that way. I have toactually have invested that
amount of money first before Ican do it. And networks, you
know, they work the exact sameway. And really, I mean, if I'm,
if I'm going to be a little bitbraggadocious, this is the big
(13:09):
theory of the book too, whichis, let's try and connect these
two communities, the people thatstudy networks and the people
who need to know how to networkbetter. It's not just advice.
It's, hey, I'm just trying to bethat connector to, well, here's
the evidence based communitythat backs up all of the things
that you're
Host (13:21):
Yeah. How do you know, like you said, Kevin Bacon is
the 669 connected person inHollywood. What's the process
that y'all are doing to come upwith something like that?
David Burkus (13:32):
Okay, so, so in that, in that specific
situation, the way that theresearchers did it was they
basically took the data fromInternet Movie Database and
basically were saying, If youacted together in a movie,
that's a connection, right? Andso they can explore it's a very
sort of big data thing, right?Actually, Facebook, by the way,
does the exact same thing. Iknow we're in a bit of a data
privacy and Facebook, but theyactually, almost every year
(13:52):
release a study that shows,based on the number of
connections you have, like, howmany bridges does it take to
connect everyone in the Facebookcommunity? And while it might be
six degrees of separation forthe 7.4 billion people who who
are out there, for the 2 billionthat have a Facebook account,
it's actually only fourintroductions. So it sort of
shrinks it. So you look at itwhen we're saying Kevin Bacon is
669 it's because of the sheersort of number of connections
(14:13):
that he has. He ranks 669there's, there was a, I think
the most connected one, if Iremember right, was just sort of
an actor that had been in abunch of different genres, but
not as a feature actor. So justsort of rotating around, but
you're building all of thoserelationships. The thing that's
most fascinating to me is thatyou don't necessarily have to be
that number one person. Evensomeone with as terrible a
network as Kevin Bacon cancreate all the value in the
(14:35):
world from connecting multipledifferent people and have that
affect his career too. I mean,the guy's actually been in a
visa ad about Six Degrees ofKevin Macon, right? All because
of this thing that justhappened, even though he wasn't
the most connected. So everyonehas this potential. You don't
have to be that superextroverted guy who knows how to
work the room type person. Weall have that potential. We just
need to pay a little bit moreattention to the network that's
(14:56):
around us and then respondaccordingly. Actually, we dive
into some of the research onreally most of these online
tools, whether it be LinkedIn orFacebook or Twitter or what have
you, most of them are onlyreally effective to the extent
that they're a supplement foryour existing offline network,
not a replacement for right? Soit's great to do it. It's great
to jump into LinkedIn groups orFacebook groups and interact.
You also have to sort of befinding ways to make that
(15:18):
connection a bit more personalbefore it gets really valuable
there. We all know those peoplethat spend a little bit too much
time on it and not enough time,like doing whatever the hard
work of getting in front ofpeople is, we tell ourselves
that, oh, I'm building mynetwork. I'm just saying, like,
No, you're not. You're justposting articles on LinkedIn and
calling that network and like,That's not. That's a great
supplement to help you withconnections, but it is not a
(15:39):
replacement for the old schoolways, and it's interesting in
the age of technology and allthis data, that that's what we find.
Host (15:45):
If somebody's out there listening right now, is in the
spirit of the action catalystpodcast, what is the first thing
that you would have them takeaction on, in terms of
implementing everything thatthey are are learning here and
what we're talking about?
David Burkus (15:59):
The first thing I would probably want them to do
is in line with a little bit ofwhat we talked about, of what we
talked about with the researchon weak ties, which is, I want
you to think of five people thatyou haven't talked to in six
months to a year, and I want youto do the work of reaching back
out to them, engaging them in aconversation. You have my
permission to wait till you finda relevant reason to do it, but
you don't have my permission toignore making the list. Get that
(16:20):
list made, put it in front ofyou, and when that you start to
think about them, or you read anarticle that they'd be
interested in, or you see thempost something online about what
they're up to, that's yourreason. That's your ramp to go
back and reconnect with them andfocus in on that first, because
it's more comfortable, but it'shugely beneficial to not just
you the overall network.
Host (16:36):
All right, my friends, David Burkus is who you're
listening to. DavidBurkus.comand we wish you all the best.
David Burkus (16:41):
Oh, thank you so much, and thank you so much for
having me and for sharing mewith your community. I really
appreciate it.
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