Understanding relationships to unlock business potential

In 1929, the Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy established that any two people can be connected to each other in a maximum of six steps - the "6 degrees of separation" also known as the "6 handshakes theory". In 1994, Kevin Bacon was the centre of a student's challenge at Pennsylvania's Albright College. The challenge was to connect every film actor to Bacon in six cast lists or fewer. Bacon thought the game would die out but it never did and instead grew beyond anyone’s expectation. Following the concept, he launched a website (sixdegrees.org) that brings together people interested in helping good causes.

Networking and relationships play a huge part in growing business today, making it all the more essential to understand it, manage it and leverage your contacts.

Understanding relationships 
And although your 1st level contacts (i.e. those that are directly within your network and are fairly easy to leverage) form the foundation for your network, it is often their contacts that have the highest potential value to your business. In other words, distant or 2nd/3rd level contacts are equally, if not even more important to leverage.

More often than not, your 1st level contacts are often from a similar field of expertise to you and there is a high degree of interconnectivity between you and them. However, 2nd/3rd level contacts have the potential to expose you to new opportunities. This could be new business openings outside your primary area and that you could never reach before. By delving deeper and unveiling interconnections within and outside your own business circle, there is a much greater potential to discover new contacts that you could build rapports with. 
But not all relationships are equal. It is vital to understand the strength of your connections and to distinguish between the types of value generated by different types of contacts. Relationship strength can be determined through many factors: the frequency of the interaction, how recently communications have taken place, its context or reciprocity. Gaining this understanding allows you to concentrate your effort on those weaker relationships in order to grow your network. 

However this is easier said than done...until now...

Mapping your relations
In a business environment, you manage your relations with social media tools, your CRM or with your e-mail application. With hundreds of contacts present within, the amount of information and the complex interconnections between your links make it difficult to find the right path toward business objective achievements. How can you gain a quick, easy and logical insight into this huge amount of unstructured data so that relevant connections are not missed? And so that relationships are clearly identified and not misjudged?

Mapping applications provide great help in this area. These powerful applications transform extremely valuable information about your contacts, into graphical entities. LinkedIn Maps and Facebook for example, both provide a clear representation of how your contacts are clustered based on education, occupation or location. 

My linkedIn map

For example here is my LinkedIn map showing my connections within my professional network. The cluster of contacts circled blue highlights that I have a strong connection with my colleagues from my previous workplace. Circled in purple are my contacts in my current role. 
To my surprise, the map has highlighted an obscure relationship (shown by the red arrow) where one of my contacts from my previous role is connected to someone from my current and completely unrelated sector that I currently work in! 
The map also shows some weak clusters. Of particular interest is the cluster highlighted purple which represents my contacts acquired from my current role. It highlights that I need to work on growing my circle of contacts in this area in order to leverage potential new business opportunities – something that was not at all obvious without the map.


E-mails – the neglected but crucial ‘mini social network’ platform 
Now don’t forget, mapping is not limited to social media. A firm’s email exchange with many employees interacting with clients and other employees (probably more than on LinkedIn), is in fact a ‘mini social-network’ platform in itself and should not be neglected.

Analysing the e-mail interactions gives firms more direction when it comes to developing their communications strategy. Which client or prospect requires more attention? Is there a pattern in the communication which could help anticipate your customer’s needs? Who in the company is best placed to announce a major policy change? 

TrustView mapping of e-mail exchanges.
In red, the most recent, in light blue, the oldest.

Being armed with such information helps tailor plans to drive client engagement and strengthen bonds. More generally, a greater understanding of relationships allows firms to retain, develop and expand client relationships.

In the legal sector, where relationship makes the value of a fee earner, such knowledge is vital. From the management point of view, it helps evaluate and mitigate the risks of this loss. How much revenue is generated by this fee earner? Would the firm be in jeopardy if he decides to leave? If the answer is yes, it means that some measures need to be put in place to mitigate this risk. As we know, the handover process is useful but is often incomplete or biased. Mapping e-mail exchanges with the client will show who can also be involved in the relation, or, if he actually leaves, who is best placed to take over and maintain the relationship.

Analysing your network will uncover "hidden gems" you would not expect. The ability to map and visualise unstructured information enhances this understanding, and empowers organisations with additional insight. It allows to view the various degrees of separation, to leverage and manage relationships and reinforce them. In this competitive environment unlocking and understanding this latent information will give a substantial edge.  

Nila Hirani [   ]

Nikec Solutions [ www.nikecsolutions.com ]

TrustView unlocks and visually presents the value in email correspondences between staff or with external entities. This solution retrieves contextual information from the e-mail exchanges of a staff member, a department, the entire organisation or, under a different perspective, towards external parties (prospects, clients, competitors, partners...).  
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