More recently, I had another stroke of luck through a couple of people I see from time to time, though less than once a year. Manuel and Alison, a security consultant at a Spanish bank and his wife, came up to me after a talk I gave at the Whitechapel Gallery on another artist. We got chatting and met again, and I was really touched because they decided to delay the fitting of a new bathroom in their flat and buy a picture from me instead. We stay in touch and I sometimes see them at my London exhibition openings.
Two years ago, Manuel sent me a text message–he’d just read my name in the weekend
Financial Times
. I would have missed it completely–the financial world is not mine–but a successful entrepreneur was being interviewed and said that he had two of my paintings. I used Google to find an email address for him. Contact was established and eventually he came to my studio, bought several more works, and sponsored a research project. And we are becoming quite close friends as well–my studio in Spain, which is in a remote place, is not far from a home he has there.
London, England, 2003–5
Sir Stephen Sherbourne is not a household name, but to the cognoscenti of British politics he is known for two important roles. The first was as Margaret Thatcher’s Downing Street secretary between 1983 and 1987, the key years when she broke the power of the British miners, led by Arthur Scargill. (Stephen and Margaret had hit it off during the 1983 election campaign, when he’d briefed her every morning before her press conference.) The second was as chief of staff to Michael Howard, Leader of the Opposition between 2003 and 2005, during which time the Conservatives began their long climb back to electability. When I met him in the Wolseley, a smart café in Piccadilly that he uses as an office, Stephen explained how weak links had been crucial throughout his career:
On the one hand, there are your dear friends, people you lavish with love; like plants, you water and fertilize them. And in politics there are always close friendships, because of the intensity of the experience and the fact that it’s not a nine-to-five job. On the other hand, there are people you barely know, but to whom you have some faint, friendly connection. In my career, my close friends–people from whom, in so many ways, I’ve learned so much–have not produced leads (perhaps because the friendship was so personal). Whereas quite casual acquaintances have come out of the blue to give me some very interesting jobs.
For example, my time as chief of staff to Michael Howard came this way. I knew him very slightly–he had been a junior minister when I was at Number Ten. But there was no direct connection. I knew a young guy called Steve Hilton, who worked for Maurice Saatchi in public relations. Steve’s girlfriend happened to be a close adviser to Michael Howard. She told him he needed a chief of staff and said, ‘Why not Stephen Sherbourne?’ I loved my time in that job, getting back to the centre of politics, and it would never have happened without those two weak ties.
Today, when I make my living as a consultant to companies, my best client is a property company. I got a phone call two years ago from a woman who said she had worked with me–I didn’t recognise her name, but she had changed it when she married. It turned out that fifteen years ago she had been way down the line at the Milk Marketing Board, then a client of mine. Anyway, she was now head of corporate affairs at this property company, told the CEO he needed strategic advice, and recommended me.
I think I have been lucky to have done so many different things and have so many connections that I have forgotten about, so that these thousand-to-one jackpots come up more often than anyone could expect.
There is something fascinating in the way that our personal relationship machines occasionally produce a bonanza. We might not know why we talk to someone or keep in touch with them–we might forget all about them for 99.9 per cent of our lives–yet if they have a good network of weak links, we might suddenly benefit. So is there something we can do to make such serendipitous events more likely or frequent? Can we rig the odds in our favour by investing in a larger number of appropriate casual contacts, like sprinkling a large number of small bets on all the roulette tables we can find?
Antony Ball, probably the most accomplished venture capitalist in South Africa, thinks we can. He suffers the occupational disease of most serious business folk–he is unbelievably busy. Yet he always makes space in his agenda, once a week, for a lunch with a new contact or acquaintance from the past whom he has not seen for a while, with no specific plan or purpose in mind.
I asked how he could justify this. He grinned–or was it a grimace?
Well, there are people in my organisation who criticise me for spending time with outsiders for no particular reason; they say I tend to go towards people I find fascinating. And it’s true!
Randomness so often works. Think about investment bankers–their whole professional lives depend on working the field. They don’t know ahead of time who’s going to be useful, or for what; but they get results by putting together chance connections. Everyone in business could do the same.
Substance comes back to relationships with people, always back to that and nothing else. If people are inclined to hang out with you, they will bring things to the table for you in preference to anyone else. Friendly acquaintances work for me and they work for most people who deliberately cultivate and maintain them. You can test ideas easily with people and select the few ideas that may work.
Some people have been so helpful, people that I really don’t know all that well. Mark Paterson, for instance. We went to the same school, not at the same time, but I had a tenuous contact from that. He is a superconnector in New York, and when I’m there I take the time to look him up. He runs a distressed-debt fund and is very successful. He has been exceptionally helpful on many things. He tells me how to price an offer or a sale, he told me ten things about one of our American investments, and so on.
I have met so many people like that who have proved unexpectedly useful in business. I don’t see them very often, maybe four or five times a year. It is like spinning a roulette wheel–you never know what will come up.
All you need to do is contact people you think might be able to help and ask for that help. I would do the same for any contact who asked me. If you have this attitude, it’s natural to ask for help. There are always things you can do which are easy for you and hard for them, because it’s outside their experience.
I believe in giving and am strongly into that–there may not be an immediate payout, maybe not one at all in any particular case, but there is a lovely big cycle to all these things. There is a chain of reciprocity stretching around all your contacts, and their contacts, what you call the invisible links, and what goes around comes around. If you give, you will receive.
Geoff Cullinan agrees, but says that diversity of contacts is cruciaclass="underline"