As we go about our work and our social lives, we tend to share our time – and our points of view – with the same group of people. This makes for familiarity, friendship and fluency. We can finish each other’s sentences, and quite often we can finish each other’s projects. It’s good for our organisations that by building these high “closure” networks we also ensure redundancy so work goes on even when someone is off sick.
But although this makes for resilient organisations and friendship groups, we don’t learn so fast in groups like these. To learn faster, we need to spend more time with people we don’t know so well – Granovetter’s “weak ties”.
There are many ways to build more weak tie relationships, and a diversity of approaches to building relationships ensures that the weak ties are themselves diverse. One of the ways we help people gather more perspectives from the edge of their network is to invite people together for an informal walkabout.
We invite people to bring a “plus one” who they think will benefit from and add to the group, and we take a gentle walk through Green Park and then make our way to the pub.
So if you’re in or near London on the 4th Tuesday of each month, come and join us for a walkabout (and drink). And if you’re not in London, why not gather a group in your community and meet some people with unfamiliar perspectives?