B00AFPTSI0 EBOK (9 page)

Levin and colleagues asked another group of more than one hundred executives to identify ten dormant ties and rank them in order of the likely value they would provide. The executives then reactivated all ten dormant ties and rated the value of the conversations. All ten dormant ties provided high value, and there were no differences by rank: the executives got just as much value from their tenth choice as from their first choice. When we need new information, we may run out of weak ties quickly, but we have a large pool of dormant ties that prove to be helpful. And the older we get, the more dormant ties we have, and the more valuable they become. Levin and colleagues found that people in their forties and fifties received more value from reactivating dormant ties than people in their thirties, who in turn benefited more than people in their twenties. The executive who groaned about reconnecting admitted that it “has been eye-opening for me . . . it has shown me how much potential I have in my Rolodex.”

Dormant ties are the neglected value in our networks, and givers have a distinctive edge over takers and matchers in unlocking this value. For takers, reactivating dormant ties is a challenge. If the dormant ties are fellow takers, they’ll be suspicious and self-protective, withholding novel information. If the dormant ties are matchers, they may be motivated to punish takers, as we saw in the ultimatum game. If the dormant ties are smart givers, as you’ll see later in this book, they won’t be so willing to help takers. And of course, if a taker’s self-serving actions were what caused a tie to become dormant in the first place, it may be impossible to revive the relationship at all.

Matchers have a much easier time reconnecting, but they’re often uncomfortable reaching out for help because of their fidelity to the norm of reciprocity. When they ask for a favor, they feel that they’ll owe one back. If they’re already indebted to the dormant tie and haven’t yet evened the score, it’s doubly difficult to ask. And for many matchers, dormant ties haven’t built up a deep reservoir of trust, since they’ve been more like transactional exchanges than meaningful relationships.

According to networking experts, reconnecting is a totally different experience for givers, especially in a wired world. Givers have a track record of generously sharing their knowledge, teaching us their skills, and helping us find jobs without worrying about what’s in it for them, so we’re glad to help them when they get back in touch with us. Today, Adam Rifkin spends less time networking with new people than he did earlier in his career, focusing instead on a growing number of dormant ties. “Now my time is spent going back to people who I haven’t talked to in a while.” When he reactivates one of his many dormant ties, the contact is usually thrilled to hear from him. His generosity and kindness have earned their trust. They’re grateful for his help, and they know it didn’t come with strings attached; he’s always willing to share his knowledge, offer advice, or make an introduction. In 2006, Rifkin was looking for a dynamite speaker for a 106 Miles meeting. He reconnected with Evan Williams, and although Williams had become famous and was extremely busy with the launch of Twitter, he agreed. “Five years later, when we asked him to speak to the group, he never forgot,” Rifkin says.

The type of goodwill that givers like Rifkin build is the subject of fascinating research. Traditionally, social network researchers map information exchange: the flows of knowledge from person to person. But when Wayne Baker collaborated with University of Virginia professor Rob Cross and IBM’s Andrew Parker, he realized that it was also possible to track the flows of
energy through networks
. In a range of organizations, employees rated their interactions with one another on a scale from strongly de-energizing to strongly energizing. The researchers created an energy network map, which looked like a model of a galaxy.

The takers were black holes. They sucked the energy from those around them. The givers were suns: they injected light around the organization. Givers created opportunities for their colleagues to contribute, rather than imposing their ideas and hogging credit for achievements. When they disagreed with suggestions, givers showed respect for the people who spoke up, rather than belittling them.

If you mapped energy in Adam Rifkin’s network, you’d find that he looks like the sun in many different solar systems. Several years ago at a holiday party, Rifkin met a struggling entrepreneur named Raymond Rouf. They started chatting, and Rifkin gave him some feedback. Six months later, Rouf was working on a new start-up and reached out to Rifkin for advice. Rifkin replied the same day and set up a breakfast for the next morning, where he spent two hours giving more feedback to Rouf. A few months later, they crossed paths again. Rouf had gone two years without an income, and the plumbing in his house wasn’t working, so he bought a gym membership just to shower there. He ran into Rifkin, who asked how the start-up was going and offered some invaluable insights about how to reposition his company. Rifkin then proceeded to introduce Rouf to a venture capitalist, who ended up funding his company and becoming a board member. “The two of them would have meetings about me, to discuss how they could help me,” Rouf says. Rouf’s company, GraphScience, has become one of the top Facebook analytics companies in the world—and he says it never would have happened without Rifkin’s help.

Rifkin has even managed to light up projects for a Hollywood writer/director. As you’ll see in chapter 8, they met because Rifkin shared his contact information openly on the Internet. In a casual conversation, the Hollywood director mentioned that he had just finished production on a Showtime series and asked Rifkin for help. “Although he is quite successful in his chosen field, I didn’t put too much credence in his skill as a Hollywood publicist,” says the director. “Boy was I wrong!” Within twenty-four hours, Rifkin set up meetings and private screenings of the show with top-ranking executives at Twitter and YouTube. The Hollywood contact explains:

It’s important to emphasize: Adam had absolutely no stake in my show’s success. Sink or swim, he wouldn’t benefit or suffer either way. But true to his genuine joy of giving, he went out of his way to introduce us to countless media opportunities. When the dust had settled, he was singlehandedly responsible for positive and glowing articles in countless national media outlets as well as incredible social media publicity. In the end, his generosity was more far reaching and far more effective than our show’s highly paid Hollywood publicist. As a result, the show enjoyed the highest ratings ever received in its time slot in Showtime’s history! Showtime, so impressed with our modest show’s numbers, has already given the green light to another series. His generosity is responsible for the show being a hit and Showtime saying yes to my current series.

For someone who gives off these vibes and inspires such goodwill, reconnecting is an energizing experience. Think back to the 265 people for whom Rifkin has written LinkedIn recommendations, or the hundreds of entrepreneurs he helps in 106 Miles. It’s not a stretch to imagine that every one of them will be enthusiastic about reconnecting with Rifkin, and helping him out, if they happen to lose touch.

But Adam Rifkin isn’t after their help—at least not for himself. Rifkin’s real aim is to change our fundamental ideas about how we build our networks and who should benefit from them. He believes that we should see networks as a vehicle for creating value for everyone, not just claiming it for ourselves. And he is convinced that this giver approach to networking can uproot the traditional norm of reciprocity in a manner that’s highly productive for all involved.

In 2012, a LinkedIn recruiter named Stephanie was asked to list the three people who had the most influence on her career. Adam Rifkin was shocked to learn that he appeared on her list, because they had met only once, months earlier. Stephanie was searching for a job and met Rifkin through a friend of a friend. He gave her advice, primarily by text message, and helped her find job leads. She e-mailed him to express her gratitude and offered to reciprocate: “I know we only met in person once and we talk only occasionally, but you have helped me more than you know . . . I really would like to do something to help give back to you.”

But Stephanie wasn’t just looking to help Adam Rifkin. Instead, she volunteered to attend a 106 Miles meeting of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs so she could help Rifkin help them. At the meeting, Stephanie would give entrepreneurs feedback on their ideas, offer to test their product prototypes, and facilitate connections with potential collaborators and investors. The same thing has happened with many other people whom Rifkin helps. Raymond Rouf often drops by 106 Miles meetings to assist other entrepreneurs. So does an engineer named Bob, who met Rifkin in a bar in 2009. They struck up a conversation, and Rifkin learned that Bob was out of work, so he made some introductions that landed Bob a position. The company went out of business, and Rifkin made more connections that resulted in a job for Bob at a start-up, which was acquired six months later by Google. Today, Bob is a successful Google engineer, and he’s paying the help he received forward across the 106 Miles network.

This is a new spin on reciprocity. In traditional old-school reciprocity, people operated like matchers, trading value back and forth with one another. We helped the people who helped us, and we gave to the people from whom we wanted something in return. But today, givers like Adam Rifkin are able to spark a more powerful form of reciprocity. Instead of trading value, Rifkin aims to add value. His giving is governed by a simple rule: the five-minute favor. “You should be willing to do something that will take you five minutes or less
for anybody
.”

Rifkin doesn’t think about what any of the people he helps will contribute back to him. Whereas takers accumulate large networks to look important and gain access to powerful people, and matchers do it to get favors, Rifkin does it to create more opportunities for giving. In the words of Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, “I’ll do this for you without expecting anything specific back from you, in the confident expectation that
someone else will do something for me down the road
.” When people feel grateful for Rifkin’s help, like Stephanie, they’re more likely to pay it forward. “I have always been a very genuine and kind-hearted person,” Stephanie says, “but I had tried to hide it and be more competitive so that I could get ahead. The important lesson I learned from Adam is that you can be a genuinely kind-hearted person and still get ahead in the world.” Every time Rifkin generously shares his expertise or connections, he’s investing in encouraging the people in his network to act like givers. When Rifkin does ask people for help, he’s usually asking for assistance in helping someone else. This increases the odds that the people in his vast network will seek to add value rather than trade value, opening the door for him and others to gain benefits from people they’ve never helped—or even met. By creating a norm of adding value, Rifkin transforms giving from a zero-sum loss to a win-win gain.

When takers build networks, they try to claim as much value as possible for themselves from a fixed pie. When givers like Rifkin build networks, they expand the pie so that everyone can get a larger slice. Nick Sullivan, an entrepreneur who has benefited from Rifkin’s help, says that “Adam has the same effect on all of us: getting us to help people.” Rouf elaborates: “Adam always wants to make sure that whoever he’s giving to is also giving to somebody else. If people benefit from his advice, he makes sure they help other people he gives advice to—it’s creating a network, and making sure that everybody in his network is helping each other, paying it forward.”

Cutting-edge research shows how Rifkin motivates other people to give. Giving, especially when it’s distinctive and consistent, establishes a pattern that shifts other people’s reciprocity styles within a group. It turns out that
giving can be contagious
. In one study, contagion experts James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis found that giving spreads rapidly and widely across social networks. When one person made the choice to contribute to a group at a personal cost over a series of rounds, other group members were more likely to contribute in future rounds, even when interacting with people who weren’t present for the original act. “This influence persists for multiple periods and spreads up to three degrees of separation (from person to person to person to person),” Fowler and Christakis find, such that “each additional contribution a subject makes . . . in the first period is tripled over the course of the experiment by other subjects who are directly or indirectly influenced to contribute more as a consequence.”

When people walk into a new situation, they look to others for clues about appropriate behavior. When giving starts to occur, it becomes the norm, and people carry it forward in interactions with other people. To illustrate, imagine that you’re assigned to a group of four. The other three people are strangers, and you’ll each make anonymous decisions, with no opportunity to communicate, during six rounds. In each round, each of you will receive $3 and decide whether to take it for yourselves or give it to the group. If you take it, you get the full $3. If you give it to the group, every group member gets $2, including you. At the end of each round, you’ll find out what everyone decided. The group is better off if everyone gives—each member would end up receiving $8 per round, for a maximum total over six rounds of $48. But if you give and no one else does, you only get $12. This creates an incentive to take, which will guarantee you $18.

Since you can’t communicate with one another, giving is a risky strategy. But in the actual study, 15 percent of the participants were
consistent givers
: they contributed to the group in all six rounds, making a personal sacrifice for the benefit of the group. And it wasn’t as costly as you’d expect. Surprisingly, the consistent givers still ended up doing well: they walked away with an average of 26 percent more money than participants from groups without a single consistent giver. How could they give more and get more?