Stay focused and do the best work you can. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.
Which is it?
The tendency of people to seek out insights from people in different fields, different organizations or of different mindsets is called “brokerage” and has been carefully studied by academics.
It can lead to better ideas, better promotions, and better salaries — whether you work in product design, contracting or finance.
Improving a process? Improving technical aspects? Stick to birds of a feather and keep a tight network. That’s called closure.
But if you’re charged with innovation, you need to branch out and build brokerage, said Ronald Burt, the Hobart W. Williams Professor of Sociology and Strategy at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
“It’s essential,” Burt said. “The new ideas we come up with come from the places where we vary. A person who only knows about the variation in what they do will get better at what they’re doing, but will always come to the same place.”
Connectors benefit from three things: the breadth of their network, the jump they get on competitors from learning about a trend before their peers, and “arbitrage” — the fact that they do something about it when they hear something new.
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But more connections aren’t always better.
Research shows a plethora of shallow connections — or a career spent glad-handing — leads to fewer benefits than returning to a few solid but relatively distant connections after periods spent with your head down doing good work.
Burt explains you thereby benefit both from the new ideas that come from brokerage and the reputation-enhancing benefits of closure: Your teammates vouch for you, while your buddies in the other department tell you about an idea that they take for granted — but that blows away teammates where you work.
“There’s always someone more ignorant than you,” Burt offers cheerfully.
With that in mind, Burt gives the following advice to his students and entrepreneurs:
Pick a target. Because too much brokerage can hurt your reputation and keeps you from getting down to business, don’t get too spread out. The goal isn’t to know everyone. It’s to “increase the risk of a productive accident,” Burt said. To that end, look to build connections into areas or fields where you don’t know anyone. Attend a conference in a different industry. Read weird Web sites. But have a goal in mind.
Keep contact with people who disagree on issues that matter to you. And be sure to ask them why they disagree when it comes up. This can backfire if you’re not careful: Don’t pick people from your own group, whether you disagree or not. Viewpoints from someone inside your own closed network don’t offer the same benefits — chances are you’ll share too many similar experiences, even if you disagree.
Set a deadline. If you’re seeking out people with different viewpoints to help inform a decision, make sure you set a drop-dead time for yourself and others involved in the decision. It’s possible to go in circles forever. The most creative professionals seek surprising ideas as the first step of their process — but then close ranks and set a deadline to come up with a first draft.
Pick someone else’s box, and then think in it. The mantra “think outside the box” isn’t just a cliché, it’s too vague to be helpful. To really think differently on demand, imagine solving the problem the way an accountant would look at it, the way a salesperson would look at it, the way a physicist would approach it. Thinking “inside someone else’s box” offers just enough structure to be productively creative.