I was reading in Seth Godin's blog post entitled 'Dunbar's number isn't just a number to me, it's the law' which set me thinking about the nature of building and developing our inner circle of advocates. In the Societal web these are the people we are engaged in Social Collaboration with.In The Journey to Advocacy, where I analyse the route for attracting like minded people to build a relationship with you and enter your inner circle, I highlight the need to constantly meet new people, but Seth Godin agrees with Dunbar that 150 people is the limit, no escape. I thnk that's probably right, but there is a real risk that we assume once we have those people in our network we don't need more and they won't change. Therein lies the road to stagnation.
I think that inner networks, like radio-active nuclei, the ones converting mass, reducing inertia and creating energy, have a half-life.
The half-life of an inner circle.
My experience is that the group of people who are my close friends is constantly changing. Some, a few, will be there for a lifetime, many will be there for years, but some will join that inner circle, stay for a short while and leave, either because we find, as we deepen the relationship, that we are actually not of a like mind, or because other circumstances intervene.Looking back, my guess is that my inner circle half-life is about ten years. In other words, every ten years around 75 people that I know well, trust, respect, work closely with, drop out of my inner circle of close friends. But they're replaced with an equal number of new people whose relationships are deepening.
That means, without any shadow of a doubt, that in order to keep my inner network fresh, active, and effective, I need to constantly meet new people, allow those who are of like mind to be attracted towards me and build new relationships all the time. That gets easier and easier with a large contact list, but it's also a key part of Social Conversation. The Societal Web has enabled us to extend our reach and outsource our memories, so that our Social Conversations, are not lost, but can be revisited at any time. Where Social Cooperation leads us to deepen relationships (and let them fall away for a while sometimes too) on the road to Social Collaboration, to our inner circle. It may takes months or even years ago for some to leave our inner circle and for others to arrive.
Great people, great experience, great knowledge and skills will battle to have a place in the best people's inner circles, to be within the Dunbar limit of close relationships, and those that are there are under pressure if they want to stay. Recognising a half life means recognising some relationships will decay. It's natural, not a cause for sadness, it's just the nature of networks.
Dunbar's Number may be a law, but the law of big numbers means that you can be more effective and more efficient in ensuring that your inner circle of close friends is the highest possible quality when you continue to refresh it regularly.
