I just read a newswire this morning about a wonderful project in Philadelphia, initiated by LEADERSHIP Philadelphia to identify the top Connectors in the city’s business, cultural, private and public sectors. They brought in Karen Stephenson to guide the project. It’s a wonderful net work story (which I have found just too late to get into the book!). The purpose of the project was to:

• Jump start a positive conversation about good leadership in greater Philadelphia
• Identify area leaders across sectors who exemplify quality leadership
• Interview these leaders in order to study what makes them successful
• Develop a curriculum based on the leaders’ competencies
• Launch the curriculum in Philadelphia-area school systems
• Convene and connect these leaders

The underlying principle on which the project was founded: “Building connections strengthens the economy.” (It all actually started when Liz Dow, president of LEADERSHIP Philadelphia read Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat and got thinking about finding the connectors in a city.)

One interesting aspect of this project is that it mirrors the research into the networks of top performers. Rob Cross, Tom Davenport, and Susan Cantrell first reported on this research thread in the MIT Sloan Management Review article, The Social Side of Performance. The goal in that work — which is net work — is to build the capabilities and competencies that enable people to create and sustain healthy networks, which we know and understand to be a requirement for health (personal, organizational, civic, and global).