11. Some experts feel that no matter how an organization is designed, the key to efficiency is the creation of shortcuts between different levels of the firm. Studies have shown that it takes only a few such connections between well-connected individuals to make a very small world out of a large one. This is the idea that underlies the concept of “six degrees of separation,” which originated in the work of Harvard social psychologist Stanley Milgram in the 1960s.

Milgram gave randomly selected people in Kansas and Nebraska each a letter addressed to someone they did not know in Massachusetts. He asked them to mail the letter to an acquaintance who would bring it closer to the target addressee. Each participant needed an average of only five intermediaries to make the connection.

Break into small groups and re-create Milgram’s experiment as a thought exercise. Let one person in the group name a friend at a different school or university than the one you attend. Go around your group to see whether each person can mention someone who can lead you closer to your target friend. See whether you can at least reach the right campus, if not the person named, and compare notes with the other groups in your class to see how many “degrees of separation” were needed in the smallest and the largest chains.