The Power of Social Capital and The Problem With Arrogance

"It's not what you know, but who you know that really matters."

This old saying still has a lot of relevance today. While I strongly encourage you to continue to strengthen your breadth of knowledge, experience and skill, I even more strongly encourage you to strengthen the breadth of your network. Social capital is just a fancy term meaning the quality of your network.

Here's a test to determine the strength of your social capital that I learned from my good friend, Peter Birkeland, author of Franchising Dreams, University of Chicago Press, 2002. It goes like this:

Step 1:	Make a list of all the people you have had a meaningful conversation with in the past 24 months.
Step 2:	Put their names into the following groups:

	Group A:	Anyone who is the same sex as you, same race as you, is within five years of your age, who lives in your city, who belongs to the same religious type of organization, who earns within $10,000 of your income and who has the same level of education as you
	Group B:	Anyone who has six out of these seven characteristics
	Group C:	Anyone who has five out of these seven characteristics
	Group D:	Anyone who has four or fewer of these seven characteristics

Look at how many people are in your network and at how many people are in each group. If more than 90% of your network is in Groups A, B or C, then the value of your network is becoming redundant. By that, I mean different people are providing you with nearly the same type of value. Look to expand the breadth of your network.

We all have four types of capital: financial, intellectual, experiential and social. The fourth one is just as important as the first three because a strong network helps you find a solution, a resource or an opportunity much faster than you can get there without one.

Arrogance is the belief that you know it all and can't learn anything new from anyone. The problem is that you essentially destroy your opportunity to develop social capital when you are arrogant. Stay open-minded to the value that other people can bring to you. Build mutually beneficial relationships with as wide a range of people as possible. Work to seek out and build new relationships. I can assure that it will accelerate your career.

I recommend a terrific book called, The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell published by Back Bay Books, 2000 that clearly outlines the value of social capital.

Take care and have a great month!

Dan Coughlin

Accelerate Update This section is always current to the current month

I suppose every book changes an author's life to a certain degree. My first book, which was self-published in 1995, was called Inside Out: A Catalyst for Conscious Living. It's out of print now for a number of good reasons. The layout, which yours truly did, looks like something a first grader could do today. And the ideas are very theoretical, which doesn't fit my approach anymore. However, I read the book a few months ago, and I was pleased by how clearly I had explained my early thoughts on improving performance.

My second book, Corporate Catalysts: How to Make Your Company More Successful, Whatever Your Title, Income, or Authority was published in 2005 by Career Press. That book was a step forward in clarifying my ideas on improving performance and understanding how to write a whole book. It's one thing to dream about getting a book contract and another thing to write a 70,000 word manuscript.

My third book, ACCELERATE: 20 Practical Lessons to Boost Momentum, which was published in May 2007 by Kaplan Publishing, has changed my business dramatically. Up until that book was published, I mostly did projects for four companies: McDonald's, Marriott, GSD&M, and Toyota. In the past 12 months, I've worked with business owners, executives, and managers within dozens of small, medium, and massive organizations in more than 20 industries ranging from boats to banks to software to financial services to trucking to lighting to home healthcare to hospitals to optometrists. It's been an exciting adventure.

If you want to see my speaking calendar for 2008, which we'll try to update every two weeks, please click here.

Currently, I have 66 speeches scheduled for 2008. If you would like for me to speak at one of your events in 2008 or 2009, feel free to contact me at dan@thecoughlincompany.com and I will be glad to see if we can make it work.

If you want to see my speaking topics and a video of footage from some of my keynote speeches, please click here.

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