The Necessity of Strangers
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The Necessity of Strangers: The Intriguing Truth About Insight, Innovation, and Success Hardcover – September 10, 2013
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Amazon.com Review
Q&A with Alan Gregerman, author of The Necessity of Strangers
Who stands to benefit from reading The Necessity of Strangers?
I would like to think that anyone in business would benefit from the book because it is all about the power of connecting with and learning from people who are different than we are as a key to our success as individuals and organizations. Most of us have an aversion to strangers, but we really shouldn't because they help us to stretch our thinking, grow, and even do more remarkable things in all aspects of work and life. And the right strangers can make us more complete and filled with possibilities.
Isn't it better to rely on friends and our existing networks?
Your friends and existing networks are tremendous assets in your growth and success, but they're simply not enough. Sometimes they are too much like you to help in solving pressing problems or creating new opportunities, and sometimes they are just too likely to confirm the things you already think or believe. And besides, relying only on friends and colleagues limits your access to a world of cool and powerful ideas--even if you are among the best connected people on the planet. Imagine that you could connect with anyone in the world, wouldn't that be awesome? Well today you can, and you can combine what others know with the best of what your friends, coworkers, neighbors, and other contacts know to realize your full potential. And all it takes is a sense of curiosity and openness.
What business challenges can engaging with strangers help us to solve?
I believe that strangers are critical to our success when it comes to almost every challenge we face. In the book, I focus on four specific areas in which strangers, and our openness to strangers, can produce fantastic results. These areas are:
Innovation: Connecting with and learning from people who are very different than we are is a real key to developing better products, services, customer experiences, and business practices. Imagine being able to combine your best insight with that of others from all walks of life.
People: Being more open to the types of strangers we hire and more skillful in unlocking their talents and building their commitment to our success. We typically hire people just like us, and even though we are wonderful, we need a broader and more diverse set of experiences and ways of thinking and acting if we are going to create breakthroughs and deliver greater value in our business, civic, and even social lives.
Collaboration: In most large organizations, and even some that aren't so large, we often struggle to really work together across business units and "silos." And while we say that collaboration and knowledge sharing are important, we spend more time hiding in our departments, convinced that collaboration is too difficult or not that necessary to our success. But what if we could connect in a more meaningful way with everyone in our companies or with partner organizations? Then we could establish a basis for bringing new perspectives to the challenges we face.
Customers and Markets: It turns out that an increasing number of customers and prospects in most businesses and organizations are strangers, and our ability to grow our enterprises is tied to our ability to connect with them in new ways to understand their needs and dreams so we can deliver way greater value. But doing this will require us to place greater value on building relationships with strangers.
How will The Necessity of Strangers help us in a traditional office?
Even in a "traditional" office, innovation, collaboration, engaging employees, and delivering greater value to those we serve are essential to success. But most importantly, our real challenge is bringing out the genius in ourselves and all of our colleagues. The Necessity of Strangers will teach you how to look at yourself, the people you work with, and the world around you with a powerful new mindset and an openness to doing new and powerful things together.
Review
#9 Washington Post Best Seller (Hardcover Nonfiction)
“Will reset your thinking… if being more compelling and innovative in your career or business matters to you.”
—Andrea Kay, USA Today
“Is it possible that we are blind to one of the most exciting sources of innovation in our midst? The strangers among us—the UPS driver, the co-worker from a different department, neighbors who are older, younger, or otherwise different from us—could be invaluable allies in our quest for true creativity, if only we knew how to reach out to them. The Necessity of Strangers is a guide to breaking out of the hive mind and forging the connections that can make us better thinkers and better people.”
—Dan Pink, author, To Sell is Human and Drive
“Alan Gregerman has done it once again—making a compelling case for the relatively simple, yet powerful, concept of opening ourselves up to the knowledge and insights of others. The Necessity of Strangers is a provocative, relevant, and practical guide to meeting the challenges facing business leaders today.”
—George Schindler, president, United States and Canada, CGI
“Are you ready to learn about the power of strangers? From the products we buy at the grocery store to the innovations we adopt at the office, strangers shape our behavior in some amazing ways. Get ready for Alan Gregerman to show you how.”
—Jonah Berger, professor of marketing, the Wharton School, and author, Contagious
“The Necessity of Strangers will change the way you think about innovation and collaboration. Alan Gregerman’s powerful stories, clear examples, and practical guidance show us that strangers are more essential to our growth and success than we ever realized, challenging us—and our businesses—to reimagine how we engage and inspire our employees, customers, and partners.”
—Chip Conley, founder, Joie de Vivre Hospitality; author, Peak and Emotional Equations
“The Necessity of Strangers captures the remarkable value and wisdom of learning from people we too often discount or simply pass by. Their different perspectives may serve as the real catalyst for helping us innovate, create better products and services, increase profits, re-energize people, improve our communities, and reach our full potential.”
—Beverly Robertson, president, National Civil Rights Museum
“The Necessity of Strangers bothered me in a good way, making me realize how much time I spend with people who are, quite frankly, a lot like me. Dr. Gregerman’s book is not only thought-provoking, but very logical. After reading it I made deliberate changes to meet and learn from strangers.”
—Joseph (Jody) Giles, Chief Information Officer, Under Armour
“The Necessity of Strangers provides compelling examples and tools to look, listen, and learn from the world around us in order to create amazing opportunities and results. Alan Gregerman challenges us to think in new ways about how individuals and organizations can learn and grow.”
—Kimo Kippen, chief learning officer, Hilton Worldwide
“The solution to the world’s most difficult issues will be found at the intersection of disciplines, not inside disciplines. In The Necessity of Strangers, Alan provides powerful insight and practical tools to accelerate this essential mashing of ideas.”
—Ellen Glover, executive vice president, ICF International
“In a reality that is constantly changing, and where tomorrow's ordinary is today´s unthinkable, The Necessity of Strangers challenges and encourages us to take advantage of encounters with strangers. It’s a humanistic approach and a vision that clearly appeals to me, tied to my belief in international business. Just playing it safe will never lead to success.”
—Jan Fager, managing director, Swedish Marketing Federation
“Alan Gregerman stops you in your tracks and forces you to re-examine your behavior and ways of thinking. A wonderful and inviting read, punctuated by practical, well-founded insights, The Necessity of Strangers shows how to lead organizations that explore, connect, innovate, and grow.”
—Amr ElSawy, president and CEO, Noblis
“Everyone looking to expand their creativity, create innovation, and improve service in the workplace will benefit from reading Alan Gregerman’s insightful book.”
—John Dillon, senior vice president, Morgan Stanley
“The world is changing! The Necessity of Strangers is a must-read to ensure that you are maximizing all of your relationships.”
—Ed Fuller, author, You Can’t Lead With Your Feet On The Desk, and former president and managing director, Marriott International Lodging
“The Necessity of Strangers will open your mind to the importance of meeting strangers and enchant you with the marvelous things that come out of these encounters. Alan Gregerman’s unique gift is his ability to teach all of us how to make this happen routinely as a key to business success.”
—Charbel Tagher, CEO, Specified Technologies Inc.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful
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Amazon Customer
HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on September 7, 2013
Format: Hardcover
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As I began to read this book, I was again reminded of how deceptively complicated the word "stranger" is. It could refer to someone we have never heard of, of course, but it could also refer to someone we have met or heard about. We know their name but nothing else about them. Then there is another type of "stranger": someone we think we know well but really don't. We have false assumptions, a mindset, about who they are and aren't, what they can and can't do, and whether or not they would be willing to provide or receive assistance.
Alan Gregerman wrote this book to explain how and why - with all due respect to the importance of one's family members, friends, and associates -- it is imperative to engage, learn from, and collaborate with strangers. "People who are very different from us are essential to our growth and success as individuals and organizations." Just as Henry Chesbrough has devised an open business model, it could be said that Gregerman offers an open people model. How so?
"Each day we pass by more than one hundred people that could change our lives but we never make the time or effort to connect. The best way to solve any challenge or create any new opportunity is to begin by being curious about the world around us and realize that it is filled with remarkable people, insights, and possibilities." Nonetheless, there are those false assumptions and, perhaps, at least some concern about being rejected and feeling embarrassed or even foolish.
He suggests a new paradigm individuals and organizations "wise enough" to incorporate exploration and openness in their DNA.Read more ›
Alan Gregerman wrote this book to explain how and why - with all due respect to the importance of one's family members, friends, and associates -- it is imperative to engage, learn from, and collaborate with strangers. "People who are very different from us are essential to our growth and success as individuals and organizations." Just as Henry Chesbrough has devised an open business model, it could be said that Gregerman offers an open people model. How so?
"Each day we pass by more than one hundred people that could change our lives but we never make the time or effort to connect. The best way to solve any challenge or create any new opportunity is to begin by being curious about the world around us and realize that it is filled with remarkable people, insights, and possibilities." Nonetheless, there are those false assumptions and, perhaps, at least some concern about being rejected and feeling embarrassed or even foolish.
He suggests a new paradigm individuals and organizations "wise enough" to incorporate exploration and openness in their DNA.Read more ›
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By
Mike Jannini
on March 20, 2014
Format: Hardcover
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Alan Gregerman's consulting work and writings have helped me and many fellow executives keep our businesses competitive through enhancing our innovation capabilities. In his most recent book, The Necessity of Strangers, Alan gives us additional pathways and processes to boost the quantity and quality of innovation in our organizations. I used Alan's insights to enhance my efforts at Marriott International and the Cheesecake Factory Incorporated and will continue to refer to Alan's insights to assist me in my future professional endeavors.
Mike Jannini
Mike Jannini
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By
Kanishk Rastogi
VINE VOICE on January 6, 2014
Format: Hardcover
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Seriously! We always get this career advice "you gotta know the right people", but no one else ever talked about the "necessity of strangers" in a successful professional life. Strangers are a necessity because of their differences and what they know that we don't know.
The author has described his work as Explore, Connect, Innovate, Grow...a simple 4 word approach each of which is self-explanatory in the context of professional growth. It is "Innovate" area where strangers can help you most by providing an objective opinion and being able to challenge you to think differently, and drive you out of your comfort zone.
Further, the author compares the small limits of exploring only within your network by comparing the magic number of "150 active connections of an averagely connected person" with the overall population of strangers i.e. 7 billion.
Almost all the chapters have some "key points to remember" which you may find redundant if you read management and leadership books, but overall the text does not get boring or mundane since there are small stories and anecdotes to draw comparisons and analogies.
However, the key lesson learned is that interaction with strangers will always help you to fill the knowledge gap which you or your own existing network may not be able to fill. So, one need to keep expanding his network and seek their help to innovate and grow.
The author has described his work as Explore, Connect, Innovate, Grow...a simple 4 word approach each of which is self-explanatory in the context of professional growth. It is "Innovate" area where strangers can help you most by providing an objective opinion and being able to challenge you to think differently, and drive you out of your comfort zone.
Further, the author compares the small limits of exploring only within your network by comparing the magic number of "150 active connections of an averagely connected person" with the overall population of strangers i.e. 7 billion.
Almost all the chapters have some "key points to remember" which you may find redundant if you read management and leadership books, but overall the text does not get boring or mundane since there are small stories and anecdotes to draw comparisons and analogies.
However, the key lesson learned is that interaction with strangers will always help you to fill the knowledge gap which you or your own existing network may not be able to fill. So, one need to keep expanding his network and seek their help to innovate and grow.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By
Darrell A. Kammer M.D.
on December 24, 2013
Format: Kindle Edition
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Very thought provoking. Hits the nail on the head when I look at my own experiences with strangers on airlines, etc. Most of these encounters have been very educational giving me insights I would never have realized. I work with a non-profit organization that continues to benefit from international exposure resulting from a meeting with a reporter while on an airliner. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone. The fact that I depend on reviews, like this one, to help with my purchases makes his point!
D.Kammer
D.Kammer
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
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Citizen John
TOP 100 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on November 27, 2013
Format: Hardcover
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Not one thing in this book seemed an obvious original thought. However, the clarity with which this author explains how innovation happens is remarkable.
Alan Gregerman discusses the meaning of human interactions and the kinds of situations that tend to inspire original and/or clear thinking that leads to innovation. These things include how people communicate in certain situations such as when they are outside of their normal patterns.
Gregerman identifies the ingredients that make innovation more likely. This includes people being compelled to interact when they normally wouldn't, leading to serendipity. Sometimes the phenomenon will occur through collaboration, and sometimes by chance such as when an individual is away from home on travel.
I recommend this book for its common sense, its truth and the apparent mastery of the subject by the author.
Alan Gregerman discusses the meaning of human interactions and the kinds of situations that tend to inspire original and/or clear thinking that leads to innovation. These things include how people communicate in certain situations such as when they are outside of their normal patterns.
Gregerman identifies the ingredients that make innovation more likely. This includes people being compelled to interact when they normally wouldn't, leading to serendipity. Sometimes the phenomenon will occur through collaboration, and sometimes by chance such as when an individual is away from home on travel.
I recommend this book for its common sense, its truth and the apparent mastery of the subject by the author.
Thank you for your feedback.
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