Connectors: Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Trust me, your current business cards probably do not reflect how fearless, bold, and savvy you are. You, my friend, are an organizer-in-training and you probably do not even know it. It really is as simple as organizing a 5 versus 5 fútbol match. You have done that haven’t you? All you need is a small of group friends (reformists), a ball (common focus), agreed upon rules (consensus) and a goal (change). If you have friends, share common, action oriented plans with those friends and agree to do them together you have what many social scientists refer to as an “affinity group.”

 

 

Affinity groups are small, usually from 3-20 people, flexible and consensus driven and work on movements that require direct and immediate action. Creating an affinity group is not difficult but the steps forward from local, insulated and possibly isolated, to player on the national or world stage can be difficult so choose your team members wisely. Make sure you have a “connector” on your team. Why a connector you might ask? According to the author of “The Tipping Point,” Malcolm Gladwell, “sprinkled among every walk of life… are a handful of people with a truly extraordinary knack of making friends and acquaintances. They are Connectors.” Connectors know everyone; connectors run the world. 

 

Gladwell was not the first to come up with the idea of connectors. During the 1960’s Harvard Social psychologist, Stanley Milgram initiated a number of studies, the most famous being his “Behavioural Study of Obedience” (a topic for another blog). A lesser-known study, Milgram’s “Small World Experiment” - more recognizable by its Hollywood name, Six-degrees of separation or Six-degrees of Kevin Bacon – has had far ranging influence as well. The study purports that all human beings on earth connect by no more than six degrees/steps. What fascinates me about Milgram’s work and what I assume led, in part, to Gladwell’s breakaway best-seller, is the idea that “not all degrees are equal”.  Some connections happen quicker because some people have a greater ability to connect people. 

 

Before Milgram, there was “Contacts and Influences” by MIT and Columbia educated Mathematician Manfred Kochen and University of Chicago educated Political Scientist Ithiel de Sola Pool. If you prefer a math or physics based approach, in place of the word connector contemporary academics like Duncan Watts, principal research scientist at Yahoo! Research and Steven Stogatz, Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University refer to “hubs” and purely random mathematical graphs called “small world networks.” Different terms but still the same theory that Milgram espoused and Gladwell took to the bank.  We are all neighbors but some of us tend to be a lot more neighborly and getting to know those people can change the course of your life or that of your organization. 

 

The specific benefits of connectors to international reform movements cannot be overstated. In your organization’s infancy connectors can introduce you to others in your same field of reform, help you find an inexpensive headquarters for your organization, direct you to people with start-up capital, and further down the road they will help launch your organization’s story on to the front page of the paper and your platform into the hands of elected officials. Better still, according to Clay Shirky, Adjunct Professor in NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program and author of “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations,” having a connector in your midst makes your organization more resistant to the external forces of change. Connectors are adept at collecting, filtering and disseminating information efficiently. They also keep the number of steps it takes to do that to a minimum so the original intent of information remains somewhat unbiased. 

 

Whether dubbed connectors or hubs, you need people on your team who have lived a myriad of lives in multiple places, held numerous jobs in manifold arenas and have a knack for not only networking but also connecting those with whom they network. An easy way to spot connectors is they cannot walk five feet in any country in the world without saying hello to someone they knew in one of their past lives. Connectors are not necessarily people of position, authority or fame but they are well-known and consistently meet, win over and add-value. If you want your organization to thrive beyond its local bounds find and win over a connector.