Six Degrees of Separation

Six degrees of separation is the theory that anyone on the planet can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries. The theory was first proposed in 1929 by the Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy in a short story called "Chains."

In 1967, American sociologist Stanley Milgram devised a new way to test the theory, which he called "the small-world problem." He randomly selected people in the mid-West to send packages to a stranger located in Massachusetts. The senders knew the recipient's name, occupation, and general location. They were instructed to send the package to a person they knew on a first-name basis who they thought was most likely, out of all their friends, to know the target personally. That person would do the same, and so on, until the package was personally delivered to its target recipient.

Although the participants expected the chain to include at least a hundred intermediaries, it only took (on average) between five and seven intermediaries to get each package delivered. Milgram's findings were published in Psychology Today and inspired the phrase "six degrees of separation."

Although the following idea that Keith Ferrazzi shared isn’t exactly related to the Six Degrees of Separation Theory it does reinforce the idea that there are people who can expand our networks and help us achieve our goals. He suggested to his team a way to build the social capital of their organization—one relationship at a time.

Everyone was asked to come to a meeting with the name of one aspirational contact – someone who could make a critical difference to a current work goal. Each person shared the name of their target and then shared why – what did they hope to learn from the introduction? The group then brainstormed about how to approach the target contact with generosity. Within the next few weeks several people were ready to connect with contacts that they thought were way out of reach, and everyone else was further down the path.

We as a Esperanza stakeholders need to consistently do something similar so we can involve as many people as possible to help make Esperanza everything that it can be to make a difference for our Esperanza scholars.