Of Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen
Copyright © 2000 by Dave Badtke
Let’s suppose you have a community problem you’d like to solve or a project you’d like to start. Perhaps you’re worried about who’s going to take over your local refinery or you want to improve your downtown or, for that matter, you want to start a community literary, arts and historical review.
Obviously, you hold a meeting, invite all the "right" people, follow rules that promote an orderly meeting, agree on an agenda, do a little brainstorming, take notes, set goals, establish task lists, form subcommittees, flesh out schedules, determine the time of the next meeting, and start planning the victory party. Right?
Hardly.
The process I’ve described is characteristic of administrative proceedings, like those of a town council, that are focused on keeping things under control rather than on encouraging new ideas. Once a project is well under way, administrative control may be essential to bringing it to successful closure, but getting a project started is something else entirely and usually follows a very different scenario.
You have a new idea. You begin discussing your idea with others who invariably mention the same person when you ask who might be able to help.
You contact the person and immediately like him, because he listens attentively with a non-judgmental attitude, shares your enthusiasm, and creates a list of additional people you should contact. You implicitly know that he will remember you the next time he sees you, even if you forget his name, and that he will be passing your name around to others.
You have met a connector.
You begin down his list of contacts and come across a person who is a veritable fountain of facts relevant to what you’re trying to accomplish. He happily shares everything he knows with you – he doesn’t control information to gain power, as a more political person might – and promises to get back to you with more information later. Surprisingly, since you’ve talked at length about your project and are used to those who don’t get back to you, he actually follows up with additional information, and, of course, apologizes profusely for not knowing as much as he should.
You have met a maven.
Finally, as you continue down the list, you meet an energetic, optimistic person overflowing with enthusiasm for your ideas, the kind of person who is able, after a short introduction, to complete your ideas before you understand them yourself. To this person, the glass is perpetually more than half full until it’s empty, after which he can still find more at the bottom that you had missed.
You have met a salesman.
Malcolm Gladwell’s book, "The Tipping Point", explores the people and processes that cause ideas, books, products and movements to spread like epidemics when they catch hold, "tip", and keep our attention, "stick", because the time is right and a need is met, i.e., because they have the "power of context". He explains that the power to start idea epidemics rests with the few, influential beyond their meager numbers, who are connectors, mavens and salesmen. (Gladwell makes many additional points, some well supported by data, others not, but his fundamental theses are thought provoking, and I highly recommend his book.)
As an example, successful high-tech companies are frequently led by a CEO (connector), a Chief Technical Officer (maven) who evangelizes technology, and a Marketing VP (salesman) who, by interpreting technological visions for others, generates enthusiasm for markets and products.
Of course, there are some exceptional individuals in our Carquinez Strait region who posses the skills and temperament to be complex mixtures of connector, maven and salesman.
One who immediately comes to mind is Kitty Griffin of Benicia who recently launched, with the help of many other skilled individuals, "Make It Happen", a group within the Healthy Benicia Task Force that desires to create a forum where community projects can ruminate, gestate, infect and succeed.
The first meeting on March 30 was attended by more than 70 people. Presentations were given by individuals who had made projects happen. The list of potential projects covered one wall of the Doña Benicia Room of the Benicia Library. And later in the Benicia Herald, Kitty thanked 5 organizations and more than 50 individuals who helped her organize the meeting.
Near the end of the meeting and before I had read Gladwell’s book, I was confused about how people would subsequently get together and "Make It Happen". I’m now beginning to better understand the intangible process: A group of connectors, mavens and salesmen is being created from whom we will learn and whom we will leverage.
Watch out. Wonderful things will certainly happen.
- Dave Badtke is founder of the developing Carquinez Review literary journal. Find him on the web at www.CarquinezReview.com.
Contact him at:
Dave@CarquinezReview.com or Dave@Badtke.com