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Who is on the show:

David Burkus is a best-selling author, a sought-after speaker, an associate professor of leadership and innovation at Oral Roberts University.

Why is he on the show:

His forthcoming book, Friend of a Friend, offers readers a new perspective on how to grow their networks and build key connections—one based on the science of human behavior, not rote networking advice. He’s delivered keynotes to the leaders of Fortune 500 companies and the future leaders of the United States Naval Academy. His TED talk has been viewed over 1.8 million times and he is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review.

What did I learn from the conversation:

There is a lot of great ideas in academia that needs to be brought to the practitioners.
Some interesting ideas that he shared in his previous book – Under new management (Unlimited vacation, Salary transparency, paid parental leave, etc) are gaining momentum in practice.
The importance of value zone (any employee interacting with a customer) and how improving the effectiveness of that zone can result in great results.
Six Degrees of separation to anyone in the world & strength of weak ties to bring more opportunities is well known
Importance of Being a broker between two networks. Most people know and spend time with people similar to themselves. They cluster and cause structural holes. People who are able to fill these holes by becoming the brokers who connect these network clusters. If we can be one of these brokers, we can create huge amount of values. Same applies to people who are able to move between silos and bridge these gaps can unlock a lot of value. David also shares some of the strategies for us to identify structural holes and how we can become a broker between network clusters.
Shared activities as a means of networking is a great way to build long term relationships with people from different network culture.
Ideas spread from one network cluster to network cluster.
Importance of communities of practice. The key to build great value is to move between two or more different communities of practice, bring ideas from each one to the other, like a ship and a harbour.
The principle of “+ = -“. You need someone who can teach you stuff, someone who is a peer and with whom we could riff-raff with & someone to teach what we have learnt.