FastCompany, Bridges and Influence

If you haven't read or heard about Fast Company's Influence Project and you don't click the link you just skimmed past, you'll eventually find links to it somewhere else. Like with this link.

But I do believe that there is a problem that becomes apparent with the Influence measurement. If someone actually influences others, they may not do it in a manner that directly impacts the social experiment that Fast Company has embarked on. And then there's the other issue that should become apparent to anyone who has influence: The messages should be more important than the person. One could argue that the ones with greatest influence are the ones who connect the people with the biggest pictures on the experiment page - because it is likely that the people who connect more people aren't being credited by their peers. That's the ugly game of influence.

In my eyes, the people who influence the most are the ones who don't get the top billing - the ones behind those with the big pictures. In the real world, we don't discuss the bridges... we discuss what they connect. Why?

Because a good bridge is supposed to be transparent.

My link is here. Go there, make your own and get your months worth of fame through FastCompany. But remember... the results of the experiment are just bridges.

And bridges, in reality, should be invisible.