The Power of Weak Ties
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobmorgan/2014/03/11/every-employee-weak-ties-work/#6436792b3168
It is often that people believe that stronger relationships are more valuable with ones that are weaker. They are more secure and guarantee you are more likely to keep those relationships. While this is a positive thing in certain circumstances, the article claims that having weak ties are far more beneficial in a business world setting. Strong ties are a lot harder to maintain and take away from being able to make connections with other people. Weak ties help people connect without having to spend the time to make the connections and often connect us to resources a strong tie may not have access to.
The article is based on the Granovetter’s theory of “the strength of weak ties.” As addressed in lecture, bridges are generally connected by weak ties and without that tie, there would be a huge disconnect. It is more likely that someone will have been hired for a job through a series of weak ties and the bridges that are connected by weak ties. In another scenario, strong ties tend to consist of people that are similar to you or have the same connections to you, so there is not a lot of access to other resources outside of the ones you know. When there are many weak ties involved, there is opportunity to find new information that you or the people you have things in common with don’t have. While media has made it easier to represent a social network full of weak ties, it is very similar in day to day scenarios. For example, it is harder to have a direct connection to someone that can get you a discounted price on an item rather than knowing a few people that can create a weak connection between you and the person that is able to give you a discounted price. It is easier to maintain strong ties with people that are close in proximity to us, so creating strong ties that are not in close proximity are harder to maintain. More often than not, weak ties are the foundation to connecting people to the world outside of the box we tend to live in.