This week, I read pages 30-70 of The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. In this reading, I learned what a connector is and what an example of a connector is. A connector is a person that is acquaintances with a lot of people. They usually are able to meet a lot of people because they have been a part of many communities. An example given in the book was Paul Revere. Paul Revere was a part of many different revolutionary organizations which allowed him to spread the word that the British were coming to so many people so quickly. Before this reading, I didn’t even know that there was another man, William Dawes, who went on the same ride as Paul Revere but through different towns; Dawes didn’t have nearly as many connections as Revere so those towns were not prepared for the British. Something else that I found interesting was a study done by Gladwell. He took 250 last names out of a New York City phone book and asked people to count how many of those names shared a last name with an acquaintance of theirs. When I read this I didn’t think that there would be any clear patterns but Gladwell found that successful business men that were old had the most and college students had the least. Once I read that it made a lot more sense because older people have more time to meet more people. Gladwell said that the highest scoring people are considered connectors. This shows how it actually is all about who you know. The people with the most acquaintances were the wealthy business men. Gladwell did a connecting study to find out how people got their job. He found that more than 50% of people got interviewed for their job because of an acquaintance or a ‘weak-tie’ as he called it. He said that weak-ties are more important in the professional world than close friendships which I thought was odd. He said this because close friends are usually people that you either work with or are neighbors with but the weak ties make you more of a connector because they have less common acquaintances which allows you to make even more relationships.
This is why building your own network is so, so, so crucial. This is why writing thank-you notes and keeping in contact with anyone and everyone who helps you out is so crucial. Think about any contacts you were able to make for your first Q projects, for example. Hold on to their email addresses, and you might well find a way to use the connection going forward (for example, for Q3 project).
ReplyDelete