How We Are Made Great

Stowe has a phrase. It's one of my favourites:

"I am made greater by the sum of my connections, so are my connections."

Who is the 'greatest' one among any network? We'd like to think it's any and all of us - a moveable feast in an adhoc group-forming world.

From occasion to occasion a different one among us is raised upon the others' shoulders - and glasses raised to them.

And we'd like to think we would earn our moment in the spotlight thanks to some unique insight or better-than-the-rest contribution.

But the fact is it's rare that we know when we've nailed it - when we've done something worthy of discovery. Because we don't get to decide. Other people do.

Bloggers are constantly surprised by which of their posts prove most popular, for example.

Mark 'Herdmeister' Earl's work reveals some of why. To paraphrase Mark's core ideas; we are a social, copycat species (less homo sapien, more homo mimicus). This is way more important in governing, or seeking to explain, behaviour than our cherished notion of rationality. We do things, then try to rationalise why we did them afterwards.

We do what the monkey next to us does. Mark's book, Herd, has much more.

Small example. Today I went through the list of people following me on twitter and found plenty I hadn't followed back. My rational explanation for who I follow back is that I check their name, any link they have provided in their profile and what they've been tweeting about recently. If all that feels right I click the follow button.

But I went through and discovered a dozen or so people I had not followed back, despite them fitting all my rational criteria. Looking at their follower/followed counts I spied a bit of a pattern. Those I had not followed back either had very few people following them - or a significant imbalance (they followed way more than they were followed by). That wasn't on my list of rational motivators!

My actions had been entirely shaped by what the rest of us monkeys thought of the particular monkey in question.

For fun, check your own follow/followed lists (if you happen to be on twitter). See if you see the same?

Other monkeys had made my decision for me and I hadn't even noticed it happening. Our behaviour is less like that of the pioneering individual and more that of part of a flock.

So where does the great man or woman stand in this social context? How does greatness get defined?

What's the Shakespeare quote?

"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them."

In all cases it's a retrospective evaluation. No one, no thing, no idea starts off inherently great.

How does the flock recognise greatness? You can't choose to be great. Other people decide whether or not a person or an idea gets elevated in this way.

Some spend all their time waiting for the person next to them to influence their next turn. Some spend all their time turning, trying to influence the person next to them.

It seems to me that in a networked world, in which we flit from adhoc group to adhoc group, each of us can and do perform either role.

At least, we try to.

But as anyone who has ever tried to turn a flock will tell you - you never get to do it on your own.

So, go careful when you claim responsibility. Remember all those times you tried to turn the flock and nothing happened - or it turned in the opposite direction. You were just as responsible then.

We make us great.

Comments

[Sarah]

Nicely written, good points well made. It's definitely something that people should consider... especially those in PR and marketing... they think that one person or a few key influencers online can change people's perceptions on a product. What they fail to realise is that these things are always more complicated than they appear to be.

This is one of the best posts I've read in months... :) (and I read a lot of blogs!)

[david cushman]

Sarah, that is really exceptionally kind of you. I've written a part II to this which is on my own blog. Hope that might interest you too?
http://fasterfuture.blogspot.com/2008/07/how-we-are-made-great-part-ii.html

[Peter]

Interesting! The secret to networking is "the certain something" that not everyone knows how to radiate.

Btw, for some reason I liked this post much better than Part II, maybe that helps you out...