Mark Granovetter's The Strength of Weak Ties, published in 1973, is an article that I find myself returning to again and again.
An oldie-but-goodie and I think about it regularly.
It reminds me to stay open to ideas, information and perspectives that don't sit within my immediate circle. It keeps me curious. It encourages me to have conversations that might appear unrelated to what I'm working on. I think it helps keep my network fresh and healthy and, by extension, keeps my thinking fresh and healthy too.
After all, if all our information comes from the same people, in the same circles, having the same conversations, there is a good chance our ideas will begin to converge. The assumptions we hold become reinforced rather than challenged and new opportunities, or new solutions to old problems become harder to spot because everyone around us is looking at the same stuff, from the same direction, with the same tools in hand.
Granovetter's argument was that the people closest to us are not always the people who bring us the most valuable information. In many cases, it is our weaker connections, acquaintances rather than close friends, who act as bridges to entirely different worlds.
That insight has changed how I think about my own network, and even my role as a consultant.
As such, my goal is not simply to have a larger network, but to have a more diverse one.
Granovetter's Original Terms
Granovetter himself used three categories: strong ties, weak ties and absent ties. He described the strength of a relationship in terms of the time people spend together, emotional intensity, intimacy and the reciprocal services between them.
Strong ties are the people with whom we have substantial, close relationships. Weak ties involve less time, intimacy and interaction, but can be particularly valuable because they are more likely to connect us beyond our immediate social circle. Absent ties include not only people with whom we have no relationship, but also people we merely recognise or encounter, where the interaction is so negligible that Granovetter does not treat it as a meaningful social tie.
I have given myself my own categories as ways to think of my network, though there is much overlap and inspiration coming from Granovetter’s original thinking.
My Three Types of Network Connection
Vertical ties
These are the people in my immediate circle and most of us focus here:
Friends
Family
Close colleagues
Trusted collaborators
Long-standing clients
I know them well. They know me well. We speak regularly and there is usually a high degree of trust. Granovetter would describe many of these as strong ties, relationships characterised by time, familiarity, reciprocity and closeness.
Granovetter's insight was that strong ties provide trust, support, belonging and collaboration, but the people closest to us tend to know the same people we know, read similar articles, attend similar events, discuss similar topics. As a result, strong-tie networks often contain a large amount of overlapping information, and eventually starts hearing the same stories, seeing the same opportunities and reinforcing the same assumptions.
A network made entirely of strong ties gives us depth, and incredible support, but it can also become quite closed and something of an echo chamber. It may be rich in trust, but poor in novelty. The people within it increasingly know what one another knows, while fewer connections reach beyond the group to bring new information in. We need connections beyond that immediate circle to bring something new in, to extend our reach beyond the people and worlds we already know and bring something new in.
Horizontal Ties
If vertical ties give me depth, horizontal ties give me perspective.
Horizontal ties run across the world I operate in, connections across my professional ecosystem. These are people whose work intersects with mine, even when we have no particularly close relationship:
Competitors and adjacent providers
Suppliers
Referral and delivery partners
Customers and prospective customers
Professional peers and specialists
We may not know one another especially well, but we have enough in common to exchange useful information.
These relationships often provide wider insight and intelligence, helping me understand what is happening around me, us I suppose. They give me market intelligence rather than intimacy. Through them I encounter different approaches, propositions, customer expectations and ways of solving familiar problems. These connections help me see what other people are noticing, trying, questioning, buying, changing or doing differently. They stretch my view beyond my immediate circle without taking me completely outside my professional world.
There is still overlap, though. Their limitation is also their value: we are looking at much of the same world from different positions within it.
Horizontal ties can broaden my view of that landscape, but they do not necessarily take me beyond it.
Lateral Ties
Lateral ties take me somewhere else entirely. Like lateral thinking, they take me across into other worlds, rather than deeper into my own or across the professional landscape I already occupy.
They might come through hobbies, volunteering, community activity, former workplaces, or simply knowing people whose professions, interests and experiences are very different from mine.
What might stop us is the lack of obvious relevance. These people are exposed to different problems, language, ideas, technologies, approaches and conversations. Something commonplace in their world may be completely novel in mine.
Many of these relationships will be what Mark Granovetter called weak ties. Their value does not depend upon frequent contact. It comes from the fact that they can act as bridges, connecting parts of a social network that would otherwise have little contact with one another.
This is where genuinely new information can enter my network: an idea from another discipline, an unexpected introduction, a different way of framing a familiar problem, or an opportunity I was unlikely to encounter through my immediate professional circle.
Vertical ties give me depth. Horizontal ties widen my view. Lateral ties take me somewhere else.
These relationships may appear as if they lack value, but its more that they do not require constant maintenance. The paradox is that the relationships which feel least important may be the ones that provide the greatest access to new opportunities.
Related Journal Insights
