Building a Diverse Team? Weak Ties Matter

I wrote a Guest Post in TechCrunch called “Weak Ties Matter” about using social science to help recruit diverse teams. I took Stanford Professor Mark Granovetter’s sociology course as a grad student, and his paper “Strength of Weak Ties” is still incredibly relevant when thinking about how to recruit a diverse team.

His insight was that within a network of strong ties, people with weak ties outside the core network are bridges to other networks. Those bridges have access to new and unique information — like job openings — relative to other members of the network with only strong ties.

Weak Ties are counter-intuitive to the way that many leaders build teams. They seek— consciously or unconsciously — strong ties that reflect their own background and preferences. Identifying and following weak ties is a conscious way to build outstanding teams with diverse backgrounds, strengths and perspectives.

Here’s the TL;DR of the conscious steps you can take as a leader.

Authenticity + core business value. If you believe that diverse teams have better business outcomes, then learn how that works for your company.

Weak ties matter. Find the weak ties that bridge to new networks, do customer development to learn where to add value, then ask for referrals.

Align recruiting, hiring and retention for long-term success. Hiring is only the first step. Retention and superior performance is what everyone wants, so align your systems to support diverse candidates and the referral networks that found them.

At Truss, we have 50% women engineers, and it didn’t happen by accident, but by conscious design and effort. However, to me and my co-founders, diversity is more than recruiting. It’s about increasing our probability of being successful by creating systems of inclusion and communication and embedding them in product development, client services and operations.

I’m really curious to hear from people who have tried these tactics — what have you learned that we can all benefit from? I have lots of war stories to share, so let’s continue the conversation.