Ten Business Building Strategies To Start The New Year: Tip #9

Introducing Dunbar’s Number

Dunbar’s number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. Relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person. Proponents assert that numbers larger than this generally require more restricted rules, laws, and enforced norms to maintain a stable, cohesive group. No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar’s number, but a commonly cited approximation is 150.

Dunbar’s number was first proposed by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar. He theorized that “this limit is a direct function of relative neocortex size, and that this in turn limits group size … the limit imposed by neocortical processing capacity is simply on the number of individuals with whom a stable inter-personal relationship can be maintained.” On the periphery, the number also includes past colleagues such as high school friends with whom a person would want to reacquaint themselves if they met again (Reference: See this Wall Street Journal article).

Put in context: We now have tools such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and the like, that enable us to create and renew thousands of relationships. That’s fine, but Dunbar suggests a reality we should probably understand, if only subconsciously. A friend on Facebook, a connection on LinkedIn, or a follower on Twitter are not relationships of the highest order.

Sit down and made a list of 100-150 people in your world that are important to you, at both a personal and business level. If you really endeavored to stay in regular communication with them (on the phone, by letter, in person), how much room would there be for anyone else, at a meaningful.

Your personal relationships would be more complete. Your business relationships would be deeper and have true strength.

Go ahead, make the list, and a communications plan for 2010.

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Authority

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