01 weak connection
In life, we often hear these old sayings:
Rely on parents at home and friends at home.
There are more friends and the road is easy to walk on.
It can be seen from this that friends are an indispensable and important role in our lives.
But if I want to tell you that sometimes, the people who really help you are often not friends, but ordinary friends you have made, do you agree with this statement?
Two British people, Richard Cork and Greg Lockwood, investigated this phenomenon.
They found that in today's online society, there is a kind of connection that is very hidden but very powerful.
This connection is different from the traditional sense of interpersonal relationships and networks.
Its characteristics are random dispersion, unplanned and short-term connections.
Therefore, it is called "weak connection".
's role and value are often greater than strong links.
Simply put, people we spend a small amount of time to contact are often more useful than people who meet each day, have close relationships, and actively help us.
Brothers Elon Musk and Jimbar Musk set up a network company Zip2, but they lacked a sum of funds to make the company grow and grow.
The two of them found a lot of venture capitalists and worked for several months. No one was interested in their companies and projects. The two brothers did not raise a penny.
One day, the female landlord who rented a house asked casually what she was busy with.
The two brothers truthfully told the difficulties they faced.
They just think of it as a complaint and do not expect the female landlord to help at all.
Unexpectedly, the female landlord helped them introduce a rich friend. They agreed to invest and the brothers' companies could continue to operate normally.
Later, a salesperson in the company introduced a venture capitalist to the two brothers. The company eventually received millions of dollars in investment and developed better and better.
is a big coincidence, but behind the coincidence, it proves the existence and value of weak connections.
02 Why should we pay attention to weak link ?
Through observing and analyzing many social phenomena, Richard and Greg discovered the underlying networked structure of our world, including three key points, namely strong links, weak links and hubs. Among them, weak links are little known, but they are of great value and deserve public attention and understanding.
So, in order to explain this weak link, the two co-authored this book "Breaking the Circle: The Power of Weak Links".
In the book, they will unfold around how connections happen, where weak connections are, and how weak connections work.
see a few simple phenomena.
Have you noticed that many news reports have not been resolved for a long time, and finally it was forced to deal with it properly due to the widely spread of public opinion.
is probably familiar to many post-80s generations. So, your intimate words and little secrets are you willing to tell your pen pals who don’t meet often in the distance, or your classmates who spend time together in the dormitory?
also has blind date partners and job opportunities. They are all ordinary friends who have not made close friends, and they help provide effective resources.
and other connections to us are weak connections.
vs. strong connections, weak connections allow us to reach a wider group and break the existing circles and inherent cognition.
strong connections make us tend to overuse our family and friends around us, but ignore those who are not very familiar with us.
Relatives and friends are willing to help us, but they often act helplessly, and there may be only a few friends close to us.
But weak connections correspond to a large number of general friends. We can see different levels, meet more different people, and see completely different potential information.
Sociologists have counted that in the contact network of most people, there are 500 to 3,000 people who can name their names.
are all within the scope of weak connections.
As the two authors said, any of these general friends may bring different information to our work and life, and promote various turning points.
premise is that we need to see these weakly connected people and discover their value.
03 Weak connections achieve strong connections
Cork and Greg, the former is a management tutor and a senior consultant at Boston Consulting Company in the United States. He redefined the 80/20 rule and is a world-renowned entrepreneur.
The latter is a famous investor, focusing on Internet companies, and has worked in IBM and Accenture International Consulting Company, engaged in human resources consulting.
Because the two of them work with various groups of people, they are very familiar with interpersonal relationships and interpersonal relationships that play on the Internet.
They have experienced too many people, using weak connections to change their lives, achieve careers, break through life dilemmas, and live a different life.
Therefore, they wrote the relevant understanding and introduction of weak connections into the book "Breaking the Circle: The Power of Weak Connections", aiming to tell readers a truth:
Good interpersonal relationships are troublesome.
There are a large number of weak connections between people around us.
finds these weak connections, which do not require us to change our personality, improve our emotional intelligence, or be versatile. As a social expert, we only need to find a hub in the weak connection to expand our circle of friends, so that unfamiliar people become our nobles and help us succeed.
This point is of great significance to modern people.
At least, when we are enmeshed by smartphones and the Internet, we can also take advantage of the convenience of the times to discover more weak connections hidden around us, iterate the interpersonal network, broaden our interpersonal circle, and gain value in this circle.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
