Having access to a network of professionals may prove to
be invaluable for business, says Simon Moores
I have, it appears, access to a network of 535,500
“trusted professionals” of which 157 are “trusted friends and
colleagues” and 129,600 can be reached through friends-of-friends,
equal to three degrees of separation.
I’m writing of course about “LinkedIn”, an idea I criticised on
the BBC almost a year ago, and which today I’ve come to value as a
rather clever way of extending and maintaining my personal network
of contacts.
LinkedIn does, of course, depend on sociologist Stanley
Milgram’s Law, the so-called six degrees of separation which, as
proved in one television documentary last year, can connect a
secretary from London with a nomadic Yak herder in Mongolia through
a series of introductions via a network of friends and
contacts.
Presented another way, let’s say you wanted to deliver a letter
to Osama Bin Laden. The odds are that it would only have to pass
through the hands of six people before it found him somewhere on
the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
This, in principle, is how the LinkedIn network operates. You
invite friends and trusted colleagues to join your network and in
return, you can see who sits on their networks and can request an
introduction.
As an example, I had a meeting with a client at Unisys last week
but don’t have his business card with his e-mail address to hand
this morning to send him a follow-up message.
Having used LinkedIn as a tool for almost a year now, I’ve
noticed two things.
First, three degrees of separation is about as far as most of us
want to reach, and that gives me the opportunity of finding most of
the people that exist in my own professional world. Second, a
person’s network tells you a great deal about their position and
influence, more so perhaps than the CV which can be attached to a
personal profile.
Over a period of years and career moves, we build-up a list of
contacts that define who we are and how successful our progress has
been as we climb the seniority ladder. As a result, if a person’s
address book is LinkedIn at Times 100 company director level then
the reach that person has among industry peers can be remarkable,
within those three degrees of separation.
I first started using LinkedIn to capture the details of close
friends and colleagues and the participants in last year’s eCrime
Congress which I organised as programme director.
Almost a year on and I find that my own address book embraces
names from the Cabinet Office, the US Department of Justice, the
FBI, the Australian Police, MPs, the leading international banks
and many more through those same contacts there exists a collective
“Who’s Who” of security and law-enforcement in a series of trusted
networks which isn’t available anywhere else.
This is where the LinkedIn concept works as a powerful tool that
leverages contact management in a way that was previously
impossible. Where it can go astray, however, is with those who try
and set world records by having as many people as possible, often
thousands in their immediate personal network in an example of
software driven ego mania.
Invariably, I find that the more influential and senior a person
has become, the tighter their personal network is and being invited
to join it is a privilege which expresses one’s own position in a
professional hierarchy.
“Friends Reunited for business” someone suggested to me
recently, but LinkedIn is rather more than this. It opens the door
on a series of new ideas about the nature of personal connections
in the business world and may become more influential than we can
yet imagine.
Acting globally, Zentelligence (Research) advises
governments, suppliers, business and the media on the evolution,
application and delivery of leading-edge technologies, and
specialises in the areas of e-government and information
security.
For further information on Zentelligence and its research,
presentation and analyst services, visitwww.zentelligence.com
Setting the world to rights with the collected thoughts and
opinions of leading industry analyst Dr Simon Moores of
Zentelligence.