The Hindu Business Line : Netting the right contacts

According to Fritjof Capra, the renowned physicist, whose interests range far beyond Physics, the network is the dominant paradigm of life itself. This is also true of organisations in society today. The network appears everywhere, as people networks, news networks, power networks (both political and electrical varieties), and telecommunication, to mention just a few.

What is the reason for this underlying mega trend across diverse fields of human activity? Why has this happened more recently? Is there a way to align oneself to this in one's career or job — not so much from any motive of self-aggrandisement, but a more effective performance of the job on hand? These are some of the interesting questions we might wish to look at, especially from the point of view of a young, mid-career professional or manager.

A network arises whenever there is a need for simultaneous, multiple connections and an interdependent, participatory activity. Causal chains then are far from linear and straightforward, and the effects are cumulative. A deep reflection and study of any social phenomenon — from consumer behaviour to stock market investor behaviour to urban crimes and ant populations — reveals this truth. Teasing out cause and effect in such cases is like straightening a badly knotted up length of string. Networks are inherent in the systems frame of thinking, which although usually associated with computers is, in fact, much closer to all human and social systems. Networks are also a way of understanding what happens in spontaneous and self-organising systems, as in the weather system, the seasons, global climate and the cycle of the natural production and reproduction found in the universe. Species would not mutate, grow and multiply or decline but for the network effects and feedback mechanisms built into it. Recent advances in both the hard and so-called soft sciences converge on this one notion of self-managing systems whereby order arises due to the inherent features of the system and not because of outside intervention. And to this end, parts of the whole have a way of communicating to the totality as well as within themselves.

A poet or artist working away on his own might never feel the need for a network. On the other hand, ask a journalist, a politician, a sales agent for insurance or any mutual fund, or even a creative writer who writes for a general audience, or a businessman running a trading company — and the chances are they would swear by the power of keeping in touch with a wide variety of people. They would probably tell you that they cannot imagine getting through their day without the database of phone numbers and e-mail addresses to get them started.

One major reason why this is so is the increasing connectivity given to all of us by the mobile telephone and the Internet technologies. Technology where human connectivity is concerned seems to exemplify the law propounded by the Frenchman JB Say: Supply will create its own demand!

But there are many more powerful reasons for the attractiveness of working through networks. Networks empower ordinary people, as has been repeatedly demonstrated in rural development programmes such as community-led water conservation efforts in Rajasthan and Gujarat. And institutions starting with the Panchayat Raj to the Amul revolution to the women's self-help groups have shown the power of small groups of economically weaker sections coming together under a revolutionary idea. The chit fund, once so popular amongst even middle-class housewives as a way of saving and financing purchase of high-ticket household items, thrives on the natural neighbourhood affinity groups — and their mutual trust. Networking essentially makes the whole work as something greater than the sum of its parts, because it is the interaction between elements that gives network its unique status.

Networks could potentially reduce friction and increase speed, especially of dissemination of information, as e-groups have proved so often. Because they are so egalitarian and voluntary, they prove to be superior to hierarchies and chains, which are the older and more familiar forms of organisation. Networks also activate learning processes, if learning is defined as the organisation's improved capability to deliver its primary tasks. Small-group activity and tutoring have also confirmed the validity of the networking method as better than straight lecturing or even self-teaching, in adult education.

But in order to function most efficiently, networks presume informal leadership and a mutually dependent membership, much like the United Nations. Sometimes it can appear as if bureaucracy overtakes a large network such as the UN and renders it ineffective and slow, as happened in the Iraq debate; but as we have seen subsequently, both President Bush and Prime Minister Blair have had to find a face-saving way of crawling back to the UN for support and legitimacy for what will happen in Iraq after June 30. Again an interactive almost leaderless group has proved its power.

People networks are the most prevalent form of networks in today's world; it starts with the Old School Tie brigade who keep in touch all through life and help each other out whenever and wherever possible. The British public schools set the model for this. At one time, when Harold Macmillan was the Prime Minister of England, nearly half is Cabinet Ministers were from Old Etonians and almost all from the exclusive Oxbridge Colleges. What was more fascinating was that the Commonwealth heads of government were also part of the same network, led by the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of Harvard and Cambridge. This explains why the Commonwealth is even to this day able to influence independent countries through diplomacy despite being of no particular legal standing vis-à-vis one another's internal or bilateral problems.

The network principles straddle the traditionally huge divide between the humanistic sciences and the more quantitative measurement-drives hard sciences. The opposition between them cannot but intrude into our life if we didn't watch out for it.

Networks are nodes for accelerated spreading and replication of any small initial cause or set of causes, once they have reached critical mass. Cancer of one limb in the body spreads rapidly anywhere else because we are primarily and fundamentally made up as a network of cells. The dreaded viruses such as the bird `flu or AIDS spread like wildfire because of the sheer force of a network of multiplicative social transmission. In other words, anything that spreads 360 degrees around itself and creates further nodes on focal points for further spread is a good example of a networks which, by definition, have no definite boundaries. Your friends have their friends and they in turn have others too, so that it is physically true that each one of us is within six or seven "handshakes" away from almost anyone you could name in the world! If you don't believe this, check for yourself. Is there someone you know who knows say somebody else at the UN, who naturally would have met and talked to the Secretary General Kofi Annan? So, you are very likely to be less than four or five "handshakes" from any such celebrity — it seldom takes even four!

Networking, of course, has enormous advantages in a globalised world arena. Wherever you are you can pick up the phone and get in touch with someone who might be able to get you out of a difficulty or at times pass you on to someone else who might be better placed to do so. Influential networks are very strong in olden cultures whether in rural or urban communities, religion groups and so on. We in India are only too familiar with its impact on every major step in life from choosing a college, a course of study to a partner for life. The only significant difference of the recent decade has been the ease and relatively low cost of making instantaneous contact. Thanks to competition this process is galloping forward at a dizzy rate so that soon we would consider it a greatly valued perquisite to be away from it all, in an e-mail-free beach resort, and temporarily relieved of the pressures and demands of an all-powerful and omnipresent phenomenon!

Picture by C. Ratheesh Kumar

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