This article is based on “The 29% Solution” by Ivan Misner PhD and Michelle R. Donovan.
No doubt you’ve heard that there are “six degrees of separation” between you and anybody else in the whole world that you would like to meet. Right? Amazing, isn’t it?
Not true!
The legend originally stems from several “small world” experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram in the 60’s and 70’s. These experiments involved sending letters from a group of people in one part of the USA to a specific person (who they did not know) in another part of the country. Each person in the chain who received the letter was told to pass it on to someone who might know the addressee.
In fact, the letters that eventually did arrive took, on average, between five and six connections, or degrees. That part is true! The problem is with the blanket statement; “we are all connected by six degrees”. The majority of people in the “small world” studies never got the letters to the intended addressee at all!
In the most successful of the experiments, 217 chains were started and 64 were successful. A success rate of only 29%! This was the most successful study. At the other extreme, only 5% of the chains were completed. 95% of the participants never made the connection at all.
Ever!
So, clearly, we are not “all” connected with everyone in the world by six degrees of separation!
On the other hand, around 29% of people were networked well enough to make the connection in the most successful of the “small world” studies. Would you have been part of the 29% of people with a network of contacts effective and diverse enough to succeed?
If not, don’t give up! Ivan Misner believes that:
“With reading, training and coaching, people can develop their networking skills, increase their connections, and become part of the roughly 29 percent of people who are, in fact, separated from the rest of the world by just six degrees.”
Over the coming weeks we will take a systematic look at Ivan Misner’s strategies for developing your networking skills, and building an effective and diverse personal network.