Mark Granovetter

But before you go hack away at your list of connections, like you're a 23-year-old Doge employee at the Department of Health and Human Services, let us all recall the power of weak ties.

This is the sociological concept introduced by Mark Granovetter in 1973, the same year they gave us Cup of Noodles and the Kawasaki Jet Ski.

I will let you decide which of these was the most influential.

But please note, the theory has nothing to do with Christmas-themed neckties, although I would much rather talk about that.

And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

So I want to talk about Mark Granovetter's The Strength of Weak Ties.

And so folks in sociology, but also management, know about this research, which shows the value of our weak ties.

These are those one-off connections that can often create new kinds of information.

It-- that is how this world works.

So there was research by, um, a, a person named Granovetter who studied what they call strong ties and weak ties.

And very briefly, strong ties are like your family, your closest, dearest friends.

Weak ties is everybody else in your network.

That's where most people get business opportunities.

One of the most cited sociology papers of the last 70 years is called The Strength of Weak Ties by Mark Granovetter.

And in it, he found... that most people get hired through their weak ties.

And it makes sense because we have a lot more weak ties than we have strong ties.

And this actually ties directly into a famous piece of sociology from 1973.

It's a paper by Mark Granovetter about how people find jobs.

Oh, the strength of weak ties concept.

Yes.

It's time for me to go out, take myself out for a walk or a coffee or whatever it is.

Um, and then to your point, the power of network, I know that, um, I think it's sociologist Mark Granovetter did a study that found that weak ties are responsible for, I think, like five times more work opportunities than strong ties.

So that's like being able to connect, kind of cast that net wider and have people that maybe is a friend of a friend or an acquaintance, and that's where a lot of professional opportunities come from.

And a big theme of our whole conversation today, Tiffany, has been community.

And that's it.

There's a researcher named Mark Granovetter that we had on the podcast who did a study.

I know him.

Yeah.

Let's put some structure on this.

Mark Granovetter's 1973 paper, The Strength of Weak Ties, is one of the most cited papers in sociology, and the core finding is counterintuitive if you think close relationships are always more valuable.

He studied how people found jobs, and roughly three-quarters of professional leads came through weak ties.

Former colleagues, acquaintances, people you met once at a conference, not through close friends or family.

Your close friends tend to move in the same circles you do.

They know the same people, hear about the same opportunities.

Weak ties bridge what Granovetter called structural holes, gaps between different social clusters.

They're information bridges.

... is the interesting part.

So this was a study by somebody named, um, Granovetter, and he found that 56% of professionals found their jobs through personal contacts who were acquaintances, not close friends.

Okay, so this was back in the '70s.

Mm-hmm.