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Networks Matter: Essential Questions for Engineering Useful Networks, with Nicholas Christakis, Director, Human Nature Lab at Yale, and Author, Blueprint
Recognizing the Power of Networks
It’s quite clear we’re equipped to live in networks. We don’t just live in herds. We’re not a group living species. We live in networks where we have particular connections to particular other individuals. It’s important to recognize that the structure of your network affects your fate in life. For example, whether or not you get the flu depends not only on what you are doing, whether you get immunized or whether you wash your hands, but also what all your friends are doing. And right now, your friend’s friend’s friend could have the flu, and that germ is going to inexorably wind its way to you.
And how you go about picking your friends, or how you go about how many friends you have – for example, in the flu case, let’s say you’re the kind of person who has no friends. That might be a terrific strategy with respect to avoiding getting the flu. On the other hand, it’s a terrible strategy with respect to finding a new job if you don’t have a job. A person that has many social connections is going to be more able to recover from being laid off than a person who has no social connections.
The point is that networks matter. It’s not that one particular kind of network is optimal. For example, terrorist cells, the kind of network you would organize if you were trying to mastermind a terrorist attack, is totally different than the kind of network you would organize if you had a group of engineers that was trying to fix a problem. In the former case, you might want people who are all connected to one central leader and not connected to each other. All information had to go through the leader, so that if any one terrorist was arrested he couldn’t bring down the whole cell.
In the case of the engineers, you might want everyone talking to everyone. Everyone aware of what everyone is doing. Because you want rapid, accurate flow of information to get the group of engineers working together. Again, networks matter. But what structure you engineer depends in part on what your objectives are. At the very highest level, what I would say is that you should be aware. You need to be aware of the structure of your network, and that it affects your fate in life. It affects what information you acquire, it affects your ability to achieve your objectives, and so forth.
Simple Strategies for the Workplace
There are a couple of general tips. One of them is that you should seek out heterogeneity in social connections. If you’re working in one division of a firm, you should make the effort to meet people in other divisions of the firm. Not just in your own division. It’s generally speaking as useful not to have too much homophily. Not to have too much birds of a feather flock together.
Second, another principle is it’s generally helpful if you broker some introductions among your friends. Brokering introductions among people you know actually can help solidify. It’s kind of like locking in your network a little bit. Not too much, but not too little either.