Chapter Content
Okay, so let's talk about something really important, something that can totally make or break your success, especially if you're a bit of a late bloomer. And that's the power of, you know, influential connections. It's not just about knowing a lot of people, it's about knowing the *right* people.
Think about Margaret Thatcher, right? She wouldn't have been able to, like, convince all those MPs to vote for her without Airey Neave. He was the guy who went around, you know, chatting people up, exaggerating her support, making her sound like the best option. I mean, the other guy, Heath, he had the establishment behind him, so it really took Neave's network to kind of, like, tip the scales.
And Thatcher, Churchill, Bonar Law, they were all kind of outsiders, you know? Churchill was seen as, like, washed-up, Law was just kind of the only option. Thatcher, being a woman, didn't exactly have the same advantages as the others and so she really needed Neave's network.
Now, Neave, he wasn't exactly, like, best friends with Thatcher. But he had, you know, a few key things going for him. For starters, they were what they call "weak ties." They knew each other through someone else, and they’d even had the same barrister way back when. Plus, he wasn't an establishment guy himself. He was a respected war hero, which meant he, like, sat on the edge of different networks. And, crucially, he was influential! He'd tried to get other people to run against Heath before Thatcher. He knew the party, knew how to, like, persuade people.
See, the thing is, Neave was perfectly positioned to gather information, like, even more than the whips. He knew what everyone was thinking, and he used that to advise Thatcher to be a little ambiguous, you know, about her views, so she seemed more open to listening, unlike Heath. Without that connection, honestly, Thatcher might not have won.
So, what made Neave so effective? Well, those three things: being a weak tie, being able to move between groups, and having influence. People always talk about networking like it's just about racking up connections, but it's *influence* that really matters.
And that influence thing? It's super important for late bloomers trying to break into new areas.
Think about the anti-slavery movement. The first guy who tried to get it off the ground, Granville Sharp? Not so great at influencing people. He was too, you know, pious, too focused on the wrong stuff, and didn't have a clear message. So he was influential in the long run, just not at the time. It wasn't that he was wrong, but he wasn't as good at getting people to, you know, care.
Historians have shown the importance of networks time and time again. Like, the American Revolution, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution – all fueled by connections between different groups of people. It's about being able to pass information around and, like, cross social barriers.
There's this physicist, Geoffrey West, who started studying cities and found that when a city doubles in size, economic activity increases by 15 percent per person. He said that’s, like, why people move to big cities. So, if you're a late bloomer, maybe moving to a bigger city is worth considering!
These networks, they rely on those weak ties we were talking about earlier. You know, the associates and acquaintances, not the close friends and family. You get your jobs through those weaker connections, not the strongest ones.
Think about it: someone you have ten mutual connections with is way more likely to get you a job than someone with only one. But someone with, like, twenty-five connections might not be useful at all! It varies, but the general rule is, you need to make a change, you'll do it through people you don't know that well.
Why? Because your strong ties already know what you know. Weak ties can bring new information, connect you with new opportunities. And you are new information for *them*. The good news is, you have way more weak ties than strong ones!
Scientific knowledge, it spread in the seventeenth century through weak ties. When the Royal Society was founded, suddenly Antonie van Leeuwenhoek's letters, about remedies and innovations, could become part of a huge network. His findings didn't just reach members of the Society, they went to their acquaintances too. Then there's Charles Darwin. He collected information he needed for his theories through letters too.
And Leeuwenhoek himself? He's a great example. He started out in the cloth trade, then experimented with lenses, visited England, and *then* unveiled his microscopes. Nobody in the science world knew him. It took months for his work to be published. Then, someone else repeated his work, and *boom*, he was accepted.
Then, he really took off. He looked at water and saw "little animals" – the start of microbiology. He discovered bacteria. He studied everything! Spermatozoa, blood, dung, dental plaque, the works!
He started slow, experimenting on his own. But once he was accepted into the scientific network, he put his invention to incredible use. That’s how Neave was to Thatcher. They had connections, but they weren't close-knit before he helped her win. She needed someone on the edge of a lot of networks, not stuck in the middle of one.
So, where should you be in a network – the center or the edge? Well, it depends. If you wanna succeed in the UK, go to London. Networking is huge for creative people. Being in a network influences your ideas and gives you feedback. You can be creative at home, sure, but you need to test your work in the real world. Networks coordinate information. You need to bring something to a network so people will rally around it, otherwise it's just another idea floating in space.
Creativity is an interaction. If you can't convince anyone you had a creative idea, how do you even know you did? One study found that artists who start in top galleries are way more successful. So, the quality of your work really depends on the quality of your network.
Being in the core, that brings credibility. The edge of the network lets you connect to other networks and mix influences. People at the center are similar, but being on the edge gives you a unique perspective.
The downside? You might lack recognition if you're on the edge. You might be a late bloomer. Still, working with people outside your field can be amazing. The thing is, the best place to be isn't at either extreme, you need to be in the middle.
Think of Einstein. He built on the ideas of other physicists, but he was detached enough to see things in a new light. If he'd been too close to the core, he might have been stuck with the old ideas.
A lot of late bloomers are in that position. Ava DuVernay, the filmmaker? She was a publicist, neither too far nor too close. That meant she realized *she* could make movies. Katalin Karikó, who helped invent the COVID vaccine? She wasn't believed at first, but she made the right connections and stayed close enough to keep researching.
Airey Neave, again, never got promoted under Heath. He wasn't in the inner circle. That let him move between different groups, which is why he knew more than the whips. If he'd been at the elite center, he wouldn't have been as useful to Thatcher.
So, in his book *The Tipping Point*, Malcolm Gladwell talked about Connectors. These are people who just *love* knowing people and connecting them. They keep in touch with way more people than average. They always know someone who might be interested.
This idea came from an experiment by Stanley Milgram. He sent letters to random people in Kansas and Nebraska, asking them to forward the letter to someone in Massachusetts. People had to forward the letters to someone who might know the people in question. A third of the letters arrived. And none of them had gone through more than ten people.
This is how "six degrees of separation" works. You are only six connections from anyone else in the world! The key thing is that it works through weak ties. The people at the start don't know the people at the end, which is why you have to leverage those weaker ties.
But not all weak ties are equal. There was a follow-up study to Milgram's experiment with 24,000 emails. Only 3,084 emails reached the target, and most people said they could think of someone to send them to!
This somewhat confirms the six degrees of separation idea, but it also shows that making your network work for you is tough. You need to be persistent. You have to find the right people, ask them the right thing at the right time. They need to *want* to help, and be influential.
So, while we might all be connected by six degrees, not everyone will do you a favor. It's a small world, but it’s a busy one. Those connections might lead to opportunities, but it's not a sure thing.
In the email experiment, Connectors weren't as important as they were in Milgram's study. Fewer emails passed through "hubs." Connectors are real, but often lack influence. And they're not the hubs they used to be. We get recommendations from strangers online now.
What helps is being able to reach the target a little more easily. Like, if I ask you to reach someone demographically similar to you, it'll be easier. One study found that if the target was a professor, most of the people participating forwarded the emails to them because they were college educated. So, Connectors are most useful when they're similar to the target. It's not connections that matter, it's influence!
Social scientists have found that networks have six degrees of separation, but only three degrees of influence. You influence your friends, their friends, and their friends' friends. But the influence gets weaker. And your network is more stable within those three degrees. Beyond that, people come and go. So, weak connections are useful, but less reliable for influencing people four degrees away. That's the paradox! You might be six degrees from someone powerful, but you won't get invited to their party because you lack the influence.
Airey Neave had that influence. He was a war hero, so people listened to him. He was well-established enough to get other people to consider running for leadership.
These ideas aren't just for politics. Art networks often work by drawing people to the center. Still, in the case of Grandma Moses, it was someone on the *edge* who made the difference.
Now, a lot of people don't have time to just drop everything and pursue their passion. But you can take control pretty late. Your calling might not be clear to you until later. Once it does, you gotta find the right connections.
Grandma Moses didn't start painting until she was seventy-eight! She became super famous because someone found her work. She started painting not because of some artistic urge, but because she didn't want to be idle.
She'd worked since she was twelve. She became a farmer's wife, had ten kids, and spent most of her life in rural New York. When her husband died, she was left unoccupied and she started painting. Before that, she'd drawn as a kid and decorated furniture.
Moses lacked a peer group, but she had talent. She also benefitted from the actions of three people. First, there was her sister who encouraged her to paint when arthritis made embroidery difficult. Her family then took the paintings to the Women's Exchange in a drugstore, and they were found by Louis Caldor, an engineer who collected art. He only went into the drugstore because he had a stomach ache. Serendipitous.
Caldor promoted Moses' work in New York City for a year, but no one cared. Just before giving up, he learned of a show at MoMA for unknown painters. He took Moses' work to the curator, Sidney Janis, who agreed to display three paintings. Janis was a collector who liked "primitive" art. Caldor had finally found someone who understood Moses' art.
Janis had the credibility Moses needed. He was on the advisory board of MoMA. With this boost, Caldor kept encouraging Moses and eventually found Otto Kallir, who opened a gallery that wanted folk art. Caldor showed Kallir the paintings in his car with a torch, and Kallir agreed to a show if he could pick the paintings.
Moses is a great example of someone who found the right person. When her jams got more attention, it was because her work wasn't being seen by the right people. The locals at the fair weren't in the art world. Going right to the heart of the New York art scene wouldn't have worked either. Caldor was in that perfect middle ground. He knew enough to find the right people and pitch the work the right way.
He knew not to give up, and as a collector, he had some influence in getting people to take her seriously. Without him, Moses would have struggled to get noticed by Kallir and Janis, who gave her credibility and launched her fame. She didn't really love the spotlight, but she enjoyed the attention, and her curator saw this as a turning point for her art! Then, when she was at the heart of the network, she was able to find the right markets for it.
It wasn't just luck. Moses made the most of her opportunity by working hard. Even at a hundred, she got up early and painted all morning! Her influence lives on. There was an exhibition in 2008 with artwork from seniors and found that art improved the health of the elderly. The *New York Times* titled its report, "Grandma Moses's Descendants."
Moses would have approved. When she turned ninety-five, she said, "Anyone can paint if he tries hard enough."