Friend of a Friend . . ._Understanding the Hidden Networks That Can Transform Your Life and Your Career
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But cooking together isn’t the only possible shared activity, and it may not even be the best, depending on your overall objective. Uzzi recommends joining nonprofit boards, volunteering for community service, or even taking up a team sport as potentially vital ways to join a shared activity. Internally, many companies have found that even something as simple as holding classes for employees can draw individuals from across different functions and create a diverse set of new connections. One company may even owe its success to doing just that.
Education as a Shared Activity
Pixar Animation Studios is not your ordinary movie studio. For one thing, it has enjoyed an incredible amount of success considering where it came from, and in a relatively short period of time. When Pixar started, it wasn’t even a stand-alone company. It was the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm, and it would have stayed a part of George Lucas’s operations had Lucas not been motivated to sell off pieces of his empire. The computer graphics group was purchased by Steve Jobs, who saw the potential for it to become a computer hardware company. The animated films began mostly as a means to make commercials to advertise the power of Pixar products. The films morphed over time, and then, in 1995, Pixar released the critically acclaimed Toy Story, the first full-length animated feature film completely drawn from computers.
Since then, the studio has won over 16 Academy Awards and more than 200 other awards, despite making fewer than two dozen feature films. But Pixar’s relatively young age and big success alone aren’t what makes the studio so unusual; it’s also the organizational model. Pixar doesn’t operate on the star-centric model of most Hollywood studios. Instead, it treats its entire team as the star; every employee is a vital part of making each film. “Pixar is a community in the true sense of the word,” wrote Pixar founder Ed Catmull. “We think that lasting relationships matter. And we share some basic beliefs.”15 One of those beliefs is that ideas for a film don’t just come from the director and other creative leaders, but from every single member of the 200 to 250 people working on a film. Another is that building a culture of teamwork, collaboration, and creative success takes deliberate focus.
You can see that focus everywhere at Pixar. For example, the meticulous design of its main building—renamed the Steve Jobs Building in honor of his legacy (and his role in designing the building)—features a huge center atrium that is home to the cafeteria, meeting rooms, employee mailboxes, screening rooms, and even the main bathrooms. (Jobs actually wanted the atrium to house the only bathrooms in the building, but that was deemed a bit too extreme.) The design was a deliberate attempt by Jobs to construct a building that would foster truly spontaneous interactions and spark diverse internal networks. And indeed, in the Steve Jobs Building, “you really do have chance encounters at all times,” said Catmull.16
But while the centralized nature of the main building helps, there’s actually a different building on campus that likely makes the biggest contribution to the company’s diverse networks and deep teamwork: Pixar University.
Located in the West Village Building (all of the other buildings on campus are named after real places), Pixar University was started fairly early in the company’s history, just two years after the release of Toy Story. At first, the most in-demand class was a course on drawing. At the time, Pixar had only 120 employees, and 100 of them, from all functions of the company, enrolled in the course. Over time the curriculum grew and morphed. Pixar University has now taught courses in acting, painting, computer programming, improv comedy, juggling, karate, and even belly dancing. Pixar employees are allowed to spend up to four hours of paid work time each week taking courses. They are even allowed to reject meeting requests that conflict with their scheduled course time.17 And every employee is eligible for the university, regardless of the job they were hired for.
It’s allowing anyone in any function to enroll in any course that makes Pixar University such a strong contributor to Pixar’s culture and its success. “It wasn’t that the class material directly enhanced our employees’ job performance,” Catmull wrote. “In the classroom setting, people interacted in a way they didn’t in the workplace. They felt free to be goofy, relaxed, open, vulnerable.”18 Without knowing about Uzzi’s research, Catmull and Pixar established a program that perfectly leveraged the shared activities principle.
The courses bring together a diverse set of employees, all of whom leave their traditional script outside the classroom. “Hierarchy did not apply, and as a result, communication thrived,” Catmull wrote.19 The diversity of the courses offered ensures that those who enroll do so because something about a course evokes a passion in them. And even if employees take courses that may not seem to have much to do with their jobs, Pixar believes that many of the skills they learn are transferable. Teaching accountants or administrative assistants to draw may not seem relevant to Pixar’s business success, but a drawing class also teaches students to observe the world more thoroughly—a skill that would increase performance in almost any job.
Pixar University courses also require interdependence. Many of them, like improvisational comedy, require individuals to work together. But even students taking solo courses, like sculpting, benefit from the feedback of other students. “It taught everyone at Pixar, no matter their title, to respect the work that their colleagues did,” Catmull wrote. Pixar University courses also teach them that the stakes are always high. “Creativity involves missteps and imperfections,” Catmull wrote. “I wanted our people to get comfortable with that idea—that both the organization and its members should be willing, at times, to operate on the edge.”20
The diverse and unlikely connections made in these courses have a profound impact on Pixar’s internal social network. It’s not uncommon for two employees to find themselves wrestling or pretending to fight in an improv class, and then to meet the following day in their traditional roles as boss and subordinate. A newly hired technical director once recalled bashing Ed Catmull over the head multiple times with a long red balloon—only to find himself pitching a major business proposal to Catmull a short time later.21 Pixar University has become one of the major contributors to Pixar’s team-based culture, and that culture has led to tremendous success. “Pixar University helps reinforce the mind-set that we’re all learning and it’s fun to learn together,” explained Catmull.22 While it does so subtly, by leveraging the power of shared activities, other elements of the program are not so subtle. The seal of Pixar University, for example, features the Latin motto Alienus Non Diutius, or in English, Alone No Longer.
When most people go about building their network, whether internally in their organization or externally, they seek out events full of new people. But the research on self-similarity, as well as the success of people like Jon Levy and Chris Schembra and organizations like Pixar, suggests that the time spent at networking events and mixers is time wasted. If you want to build a diverse collection of new contacts, your time is better spent engaging in shared activities, especially ones that evoke passion, require interdependence, and put something at stake. You may not even be focused on networking while you participate in such activities, but after you finish, you’ll find that you have gathered a host of new and interesting people that now call you friend.
From Science to Practice
The research on human behavior at networking mixers and on the potency of shared activities is clear: networking events are not especially effective. This is especially good news for the networking-phobic. While these events promise a diverse group of potential new connections, in practice most of us end up clinging to people we already know or new people who are similar to ourselves. What we need instead is to invest time and energy in events and activities that bring the greatest potential for new and diverse connections. The research suggests that our time is better spent seeking out activities with a shared purpose that evokes passion or emotion, requires interdependence, and has something at stake. These shared activities draw a more diverse group of people
and create stronger bonds among participants. Here are a few types of shared activities to start participating in:
Community service programs
Recreational sports leagues, martial arts, or hobby clubs
Nonprofit boards or committees
At-work special projects teams
Churches, synagogues, mosques, and other faith-based groups
Practicing Online
If you are already using many social media services like Facebook and LinkedIn, you are in luck. Many of these services now have “groups” features where like-minded individuals share information, discuss their passions, and collaborate on projects. Be careful not to join groups dedicated solely to networking and connections, since it’s likely that a focus on self-similarity will creep in again. Instead, sign up for groups dedicated to your nonwork passions, or at the very least industry groups that are intentionally wide in their reach. Because of the online nature of these groups, many of them draw an even more diverse collection of individuals than in-person activities—and you don’t even need to leave your house.
For a downloadable template to use when completing this exercise, go to http://davidburkus.com/resources/ and look for networking resources.
—11—
Build Stronger Ties Through Multiplexity
Or
Why Who You Know Includes How Well You Know Them
When we consider our overall network, we tend to assign people to certain categories. Some are friends, others are business relationships, and still others are people we interact with because of a shared activity. But networks are often much more complicated than such categories suggest. There is a phenomenon that sociologists call multiplexity—that is, two people may have more than one type of relationship. Research reveals that multiplex ties make for a stronger bond between two people, suggesting that, while assigning our contacts to single categories might simplify things, that simplification often comes at a cost of not knowing the full value of our network.
IN JUNE 2006, Warren Buffett surprised the philanthropic world by announcing that, while he was still committed to giving away his life fortune to charity, he would not go it alone and just establish a charitable foundation in his own name, as other titans of business traditionally had done (like the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and others).1 Instead, he intended to give the bulk of his wealth to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—to pool his resources with those of Bill Gates so that together they could make a bigger impact than either could alone. (However, Buffett did divert some of his wealth to other causes, establishing four charitable trusts named for his late wife and three children.)
To an outside observer, Buffett’s move seems quite odd. It was the first time such a large donation wasn’t used to set up a namesake foundation. Moreover, Buffett was entrusting the money to someone twenty-five years younger than he was. But those who knew the story of the two men’s relationship also knew that Buffett’s ability to trust that such a large portion of his wealth would be used effectively and responsibly was based on decades of trust and collaboration. But this is where the story does get odd. Gates and Buffett’s relationship was built not on a foundation of doing business together, at least not initially. Instead, it was built on something else.
Playing bridge.
For more than two decades, the two men have strengthened their personal relationship and collaborated on work and philanthropic projects in large part because they shared an affinity for playing the same card game. Gates and Buffett originally met on July 5, 1991. Gates’s mother, Mary Maxwell Gates, invited Gates to join her and some friends (including Buffett) for dinner at the family’s vacation home. It wasn’t the first time Mrs. Gates had entertained notable businesspeople at her home. Nor was it the first time she had used her network and connections to help her son. Mrs. Gates was active in the Seattle philanthropic and business communities, having served as a regent on the University of Washington’s board, on the national board of the United Way, and on the boards of several area businesses.2 It was while she was working with the United Way that Mrs. Gates met John Opel, then chairman of IBM, and encouraged him to work with her son’s upstart software company, Microsoft. So when Mrs. Gates hosted these gatherings and invited her son, there was usually a reason.
Nonetheless, Gates didn’t want to take time away from working on Microsoft to meet Buffett at first. “He just buys and sells pieces of paper. That’s not real value added,” Gates told her. “I don’t think we’d have much in common.”3 He was wrong. Gates agreed to swing by for a short visit, chatted with Buffett, and almost immediately the two bonded. Buffett asked Gates questions about Microsoft that he had never been asked before. The quick visit turned into hours of conversation—during which they likely uncovered a shared love of bridge.
Since that day, they have grown their friendship and deepened their business relationship, often over a hand of bridge. Most often, the two play online. Gates reportedly uses the name “Chalengr” and Buffett goes by “T-Bone.”4 Buffett estimates that he plays more than 4,000 hands a year online—obviously not all with Gates. Still, the game—and the duo’s friendship—has spawned a lot of activity. In 2004, Buffett asked Gates to join the board of Berkshire Hathaway—a position for which he gets paid a mere $2,000 per year. (Berkshire Hathaway directors are the lowest-paid corporate board of any S&P 500 firm.5) Less than two years after Gates joined, Buffett announced his donation. Along with the donation, Buffett also joined the Gates Foundation as a trustee to help steer the organization.
Ranging from dinner at Gates’s mother’s home to countless hands of bridge, to business discussions about the future of Berkshire Hathaway, and eventually to strategizing how best to help the world, Gates and Buffett’s relationship is far more complex than it appears on the outside. But the truth is that almost all relationships are. While it’s tempting to silo business relationships in one category and personal relationships in another, the reality is that humans connect over a multitude of pathways, mixing business with personal and with myriad other types of connection. Sociologists use the term multiplexity to refer to the number of different social connections between any two individuals. And while the discovery of multiplexity is fairly new, its occurrence in business is not.
Consider the strange tale of how the legendary consumer goods company Procter & Gamble got started.6 William Procter was an English immigrant to America whose first wife had died shortly after they arrived in Cincinnati. He was formally trained as a candlemaker, and while working in a bank by day, he started a one-man candlemaking business that covered everything from manufacturing to sales to delivery. It was in this trade that he met Alexander Norris, the owner of a prominent candle shop in Cincinnati. More importantly, Procter met his daughter, Olivia Norris. Procter quickly proposed to and married Norris. Coincidentally, the Irish immigrant James Gamble was courting Olivia Norris’s sister, Elizabeth Ann Norris. Gamble had worked as a soapmaking apprentice and eventually opened his own soap and candle shop. It was both men’s new father-in-law, Alexander Norris, who first saw the opportunity. He noticed that both of his new sons-in-law competed for the same raw materials to make their products and suggested that perhaps the two would be better off by simply joining forces. On October 31, 1837, they formally partnered together to form Procter & Gamble.
In the more than one and a half centuries that have passed since the start of their partnership, Procter & Gamble has grown to become one of the largest companies in the world. The company still makes soap and candles, but also medicine, makeup, diapers, and dishwashing liquid. And it all started, not because of the two men’s admiration for each other’s business savvy, but because of a personal connection that became a multiplex tie.
Fast-forward more than a century and move from the world of soap to the realm of ice cream, and you’ll find a similar story. Ice cream legends Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, of Ben & Jerry’s, became a multiplex tie and co-ran a multinational corporation from what
started as a middle school friendship. “Jerry and I met in junior high,” Cohen said. “When he fainted in gym class.”7 The two quickly developed a friendship, partly because they were the slowest two kids running around the track, but also because of their mutual love of food (which likely caused their being the two heaviest and slowest kids in gym class). But in middle school, high school, and even college, starting an ice cream shop wasn’t a thought in either of their minds. Instead, they focused on their friendship. Greenfield graduated high school and went to college in Ohio. Cohen went to college in upstate New York but dropped out. He paid a visit to his friend in Ohio and ended up staying for a month, living in Greenfield’s dorm room and making money selling sandwiches around the dorms at night.
Cohen moved back to New York City, and after graduation Greenfield took his turn moving into Cohen’s apartment. The two grew even more as friends and worked separately to pay the rent. Cohen drove a taxi and tried to sell his pottery; Greenfield tried to get into medical school but ended up working as a lab technician. “Neither of us really liked what we were doing with our lives. So we decided to try to start something together,” Cohen said.8
They knew they wanted to work with food, and after some research, they settled on ice cream because it had the cheapest equipment costs. Together, they enrolled in a correspondence course on ice cream making. The course cost $5 and featured open-book, open-note tests. “At last we had found a type of education that we really excelled at,” Greenfield joked.9 They chose Burlington, Vermont, as their testing ground because it was a college town without the competition of an existing homemade ice cream store. They fixed up an old gas station, experimented with various recipes and business models, and eventually stumbled onto a winning formula—not just for ice cream but also for business. In 2000, more than two decades after their friendship turned into a business partnership, the pair sold the Ben & Jerry’s brand to Unilever for $326 million—a pretty good return on an investment of $5 for an ice cream course.10