Friend of a Friend . . ._Understanding the Hidden Networks That Can Transform Your Life and Your Career

by David Burkus

  It only took a few links—a few people to get the letter from Omaha to Boston—to make a large and tightly clustered world suddenly very small. Watts and Strogatz had found out the reason for the small-world effect. They had found a way for social networks to feel incredibly vast and at the same time small and interconnected.

  To understand how the small-world effect works, imagine you are sitting in a circle of twenty-four people and each person can speak only to the person on either side of them. Getting a message to a person across the circle from you would require going through twelve people. But now imagine that four people in the circle—not everyone, just those four—are also able to send a message across the circle. No matter where you are sitting in the circle, the number of people needed to send a message suddenly drops by around half. Those four people’s ability to provide a shortcut is all it takes. Now imagine a circle of 7 billion people, with millions of them providing shortcuts for others. You would have a world connected by only a handful of introductions. In other words, you would have our world.

  Watts and Strogatz quickly wrote up their findings and sent their paper off to the prestigious journal Nature, but not before they decided to test their hypothesis using one of the most famous small-world examples of all: Kevin Bacon. Watts and Strogatz reached out to Brett Tjaden, one of the creators of the Oracle of Bacon, and asked to borrow his data. Using his work, as well as the collection of data from IMDb, Watts and Strogatz re-created a network of films, using costarring roles as connection points. Out of roughly 225,000 actors and actresses, the path between any two individuals turned out to be shockingly small. Everyone could be connected to everyone else in less than four steps because, just as in their mathematical models, Hollywood is a tightly clustered network that includes individuals who span vast distances and provide shortcuts for everyone else.

  Interestingly, however, Kevin Bacon is not one of them. While his path to everyone else is a little shorter—less than three steps—it is by no means the shortest. That honor fell to Rod Steiger, who wasn’t exactly a movie star but still managed to act in 148 films across a diverse array of genres.19 As for Bacon, he ranked 669th on the list of best-connected actors—not exactly the center of the universe.20 While that is bad news for Bacon, it’s good news for us. His rise to fame as an uber-connected actor appears to have been a historical fluke. (Had the Albright College students been watching a different television channel, it could just as easily have been “Six Degrees of Chuck Norris.”) However, his short distance to others but low ranking on the list of the best-connected suggests that perhaps all of us are indeed more connected than we think. Duncan Watts wanted to know about that too.

  Having codiscovered an explanation for why the small-world effect exists, Watts turned his attention to verifying it on a larger scale. Watts, along with Peter Dodds and Roby Muhamad, re-created Milgram’s experiment, but used modern technology and a much bigger sample.21 They set up a website to recruit participants, who were then randomly directed to one of eighteen target receivers across the globe. The targets ranged from university professors in the United States to policemen in Australia to technology consultants in India.

  Participants were instructed to use email to relay a message by forwarding the message to a social acquaintance who could then move it closer to the target. More than 20,000 people signed up to participate, and when the experiment ended, more than 60,000 people in 166 countries had helped relay a message. In the end, the results were shockingly similar to Milgram’s. Despite the vast differences in geography and the diversity of the targets, the estimated length of communication chains was between five and seven people. Unlike Milgram’s study, however, there was no common path traveled. Instead of two to three people who dominated the final leg of delivery, messages reached the end target through about as many participants as there were communication chains. “Ordinary individuals,” Watts later wrote, “are just as capable of spanning critical divides between social and professional circles, between different nations, or between different neighborhoods, as exceptional people.”22

  Kevin Bacon isn’t the center of the universe. No one is.

  And that universe might be even smaller than we first anticipated. Since 2011, Facebook has been partnering with mathematicians and sociologists to track the degrees of separation between its users.23 Intriguingly, as the number of users increases and the span of the globe with access to Facebook widens, the distance between users continues to shrink. In 2011, 721 million people had Facebook accounts, and the chain length between users was 3.74 people (three to four people). When Facebook ran the study again in 2016, the number of users had more than doubled, to 1.59 billion, and yet the chain length had shrunk, to 3.57 (still three to four people, but incrementally much closer to just three). In other words, if you have a Facebook account, you are within four introductions of anyone else in the billion-plus network.

  It’s important to note one small caveat, however. Facebook calculated the degrees of separation for people based on what was possible and found that 3.57 was the average. By contrast, both Milgram in his original study and Watts and his research teams asked participants to take action and then they traced those actions. Nevertheless, Facebook’s findings suggest that of the more than 7 billion people on the planet, the possibility for connection is much less than what Watts and Milgram found. We might actually be within far fewer than six degrees of separation from anyone else. We might be far more connected than any of us would suspect.

  Perhaps Milgram knew that. While we tend to refer to Travers and Milgram’s study as evidence of “six degrees of separation,” Milgram himself never used the term.24 That term originated from John Guare, who wrote a play in 1990 inspired by the findings of network science. The play, and the movie that followed it, features a monologue toward the end from one of the main characters:

  I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation. Between us and everybody else on this planet. The president of the United States. A gondolier in Venice. Fill in the names . . . It’s not just big names. It’s anyone. A native in a rain forest. A Tierra del Fuegan. An Eskimo. I am bound to everyone on this planet by a trail of six people. It’s a profound thought . . . How every person is a new door, opening up into other worlds.25

  Guare’s play outlines the real lesson of research into small worlds and the research on degrees of separation: We don’t grow or create a network—the truth is, we already exist inside of one. Our network is not a Rolodex separate from us, to be used by us. Rather, we are an integrated part of the bigger whole. The entire collection of humans, 7 billion strong and counting, is basically one interconnected network. Everyone is a friend of a friend (even if we haven’t met that friend yet). Every new person we meet opens up our ability to navigate that network, and any given person can open us up to an entirely new world.

  Navigating the Network

  It was knowing how to navigate that new network that landed Michelle McKenna-Doyle her dream job with the National Football League. Growing up, McKenna-Doyle was always a fan of sports. School sports were dominantly male then, but that didn’t stop her from trying out for just about every team—including football. “I didn’t make it obviously,” McKenna-Doyle joked.26 But she did take just about every job at her high school that got her close to the action. From painting lines on the football field to selling hot dogs at the concession stand, she did whatever she could to stay close to the game.

  Her passion for football ran in the family. Her father was a devoted fan of legendary quarterback Joe Namath, and her brother accepted a full scholarship to play football at the University of Alabama. Indeed, her father was almost certain he would see his child make it to the NFL one day. And he was right—it just wasn’t his son. McKenna-Doyle decided to study accounting and chose to go to Auburn University (a decision that didn’t go over so well in her Crimson Tide family). There she continued operating around football, working in the Au
burn Athletics Department, where she once tutored football great Bo Jackson. After graduation, McKenna-Doyle pretty much tucked away her dream of working in and around football. Instead, she worked in accounting and finance for a number of years before finding her way to the Walt Disney Company, where her fourteen years of service transitioned her from a strictly finance role to an IT role collecting and analyzing massive amounts of customer data to improve the guest experience. Eventually she became chief information officer (CIO) at Universal Orlando Resort.

  McKenna-Doyle continued pivoting and moving, eventually becoming the CIO at Constellation Energy, which at the time was a Fortune 500 energy company based in Baltimore. When Exelon announced in 2011 that it was purchasing Constellation and moving the corporate headquarters to Chicago, McKenna-Doyle was faced with one more big move—either packing up and moving her home to Chicago or moving to a new job. “I didn’t want to move to Chicago,” McKenna-Doyle reflected. “So it was sort of in my mind that I needed to look but I didn’t want to look for another job.”27 That’s when her love of football guided her career once again.

  While online to manage her fantasy football team, McKenna found herself wandering around on the NFL website. “There was a link down at the bottom, ‘About Us,’ and there was one for jobs.”28 McKenna-Doyle started reading the job openings listed and found one that sounded familiar. It wasn’t listed as a CIO position, but the requirements matched her experience almost perfectly. “I read the description and I was like, ‘They need a CIO.’” When she showed the job posting to her husband, he confirmed her suspicion—he said it sounded just like her. At the time, she didn’t know anyone working at the NFL or have any way to break through the clutter of blind job applications, so she put the thought of working there in the back of her mind.

  A few days later, a friend forced it back to the front of her mind. The friend had found the same job posting online, and she sent it to McKenna-Doyle along with a note saying how much it sounded like her. “Alright, that’s two people,” McKenna-Doyle thought, and with that confirmation she resolved to apply.29 The only problem was that she didn’t have any connection straight to the executive offices of the NFL. Moreover, she would have to convince the leadership of the league that what the NFL actually needed wasn’t the job they’d posted, but rather a full-scale CIO with a seat at the senior leadership table. Pulling that off from just a random online application would be nearly impossible, so she knew she needed to get closer to those making the hiring decision. She just didn’t know how . . . at first.

  Even among her weak ties, there just wasn’t anyone who was working for the league. But a few degrees out, there was a path that could get her there.

  “I started working my network,” McKenna-Doyle said, “and someone I used to work with at Disney was at Russell Reynolds.”30 This person was a former Disney cast member who had gone on to become a headhunter at the well-known executive search firm. Neither he nor his firm was conducting the search, but he happened to know the firm that was, and how to get their attention. He connected McKenna-Doyle to the right search firm, which then, in turn, connected her to the NFL. With the connection made, she was able to sell herself and her idea to the leadership team. It took some time, but after six months going back and forth, the NFL had made McKenna-Doyle an offer—to become Senior Vice President and CIO.

  When she started with the NFL, McKenna-Doyle had been appointed to the highest office a female executive had ever held in the male-dominated league. And best of all, McKenna-Doyle’s father finally got to see one of his children make it to the NFL. McKenna-Doyle’s story is inspirational, offering hope that almost anyone can find meaningful work connected to their passion. But it’s also a story that highlights the importance of six degrees of separation and the realization that we are all operating inside of a larger network. The network of friends of friends can be a powerful tool even when we don’t know someone directly. The lesson of the small-world effect, and the lesson of six degrees of separation is that certain people aren’t the center of the universe—all of us are. And all of us can find a path through the network to reach the stars.

  From Science to Practice

  As we learned in the first chapter, there’s an incredible power lying dormant in your dormant ties. Old contacts with whom you have fallen out of touch often have access to new information. However, as we saw in this chapter, former contacts are even more valuable than that. The most common reason for a formerly strong tie turning dormant is that either you or that person has moved on. One of you may have physically moved to a different location, or switched jobs, or just moved on to a different stage in life.

  But when you move, you don’t just leave—you also arrive somewhere new. As Michelle McKenna-Doyle found out when she started navigating her network, often when someone moves they become a valuable connection to new parts of the larger network. Connecting with old contacts gives you a larger sense of your network and just how many potential connections are within your reach. In other words, former colleagues are more valuable than you might think.

  One of the best ways to stay connected to, or get back in touch with, these former colleagues is through alumni networks. While McKenna-Doyle didn’t have a formal alumni group to use, she did a great job keeping in touch with her former Disney colleagues, and it paid off.

  Today it’s even easier. Most universities maintain a fairly active alumni network (they see it as a source of future donations), and many companies and even nonprofit organizations are starting to organize alumni networks to keep connected to former members (they see them as a valuable source of information, just as the research on dormant ties would predict). In addition, trade associations and professional groups are a great place not just to expand your network with new connections but to reconnect with former contacts who have moved into new roles but stayed in the same profession.

  If you can’t find any alumni network, trade association, or professional group through which to reconnect, then why not start your own? It doesn’t have to be elaborate. Simply reaching out to former coworkers and inviting them to have lunch or call just to catch up may be enough to kick-start an alumni movement. Interestingly, this is exactly what happened at Procter & Gamble. Former employees started a nonprofit alumni club that grew to be so influential that P&G chose to deliberately partner with them to serve all former P&G employees and their community. Now the P&G alumni network rivals that of more deliberate efforts like those of universities and consulting firms.

  Practicing Online

  Social media services like Facebook and LinkedIn are a great place to reconnect with old colleagues and start getting a feel for the larger network you have access to within a few introductions. Both of these services (and other social media websites) offer a “Groups” function that enables any individual to establish a group around interests, location, or former employees. Even if your former organizations don’t have formal alumni networks, the chances are pretty good that someone has created an online rendition. And if not, these services lower the cost of starting your own to nothing.

  For a downloadable template to use when completing this exercise, go to http://davidburkus.com/resources/ and look for networking resources.

  —3—

  Become a Broker and Fill Structural Holes

  Or

  Why Climbing the Corporate Ladder May Be the Worst Path to the Top

  We often think that the way to success is to just stay in our lane, climb up the corporate ladder or become an expert in our field, and focus on meeting ever more powerful people inside our industry or sector. Research into networks reveals that, surprisingly, the most connected people inside a tight group within a single industry are less valuable than the people who span the gaps between groups and broker information back and forth. This finding has implications for how we manage our careers and how we manage our organizations.

  JANE MCGONIGAL HAD TO CHOOSE between playing video games and healing from head trauma. She chose both
, and it saved her life.

  In the summer of 2009, McGonigal was in her office and reached down to pick up some papers. On the way back up, she hit her head hard on the cabinet door. Nothing major, she thought, but she knew something wasn’t right. “That wasn’t good at all,” she told her husband after it happened.1 A few hours later, she started to feel weird. Within a day, she was experiencing headaches, vertigo, and slurred speech. She found that she couldn’t read or write without triggering symptoms. Something seemed like it was indeed major after all.

  McGonigal went to see the doctor, who diagnosed her with a concussion and sent her home, saying she would feel better after a week’s rest. After a week, though, she wasn’t any better. A week turned into a month of symptoms, and doctors changed their recovery estimate to three months. She wasn’t healing properly from the concussion, they said, and so the symptoms would last much longer. Her doctors told her to avoid everything that would trigger symptoms. No reading or writing. No exercise. No work. No alcohol or caffeine. No video games. “In other words,” she joked to her doctor, “no reason to live.”2

  It turned out that she wouldn’t have to wait through three months of doing nothing. Thirty-four days after getting hit on the head, she had her “aha” moment—but it wasn’t what most people would expect.

  I’m either going to kill myself or turn this into a game, she thought.3

  Her suicidal thought wasn’t that uncommon. One in three people with a traumatic brain injury, even a mild one, start to fall into a depression and can so strongly doubt they will recover that they ponder ending their lives. In the moment, McGonigal’s mind was telling her that she would never get better and that she wanted to die.