Networking – the Key to Business Success“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” This saying has never had more truth. Networking (or the art of building and maintaining relationships) is now considered essential for “nothing can move your business or career faster and more effectively than having a base of contacts who are in the right position to help you to achieve your ambitions.”1 Without realizing it, we all engage in networking – expanding our circle of contacts and strengthening relationships – every day. However, we can often think of someone else we know who is better at remembering names, where they met someone, talking at parties and engaging in meaningful conversation, getting work through recommendations, and keeping in touch. While we all network at some level, some people just seem to be better at it than others. Fortunately, effective networking is a skill set we are all able to acquire.2 And our connections are greater than we would probably think – as little as six people may separate you from Bill Gates, Nelson Mandela or Oprah Winfrey (or anyone else you would care to know). The concept of “six degrees of separation” between people comes from an experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram, a sociologist, in 1967. He sought to determine how many links would be necessary for a package to be delivered to a Stock Broker in Boston from an unknown farmer in Omaha, Nebraska. A 160 farmers were asked to send a package to the person they thought would be as close as possible to the Stock Broker. Milgram’s colleagues predicted as many as one hundred intermediaries would be required. Most of the packages reached their destination within five or six intermediaries – hence the claim that we are separated by six points of connection between any two people. Interestingly however, what that experiment also found was that most of the packages were actually delivered to the Stock Broker by the same three people. “What it actually means is that a relatively small number of people are connected to the rest by a few degrees and that the rest of us are connected to everyone else through these people.”2 Such people have been described as “connectors”.3 While it seems immensely encouraging to think that we may be closely connected to someone of influence, “any relationship that is based on a distance of more than two degrees is equivalent to anonymity.”4 Our close relationships are therefore the most important. Consequently, it is essential to establish and foster our direct contacts. These strong links will, in turn, offer the opportunity to have access to many more people.
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