Dunbar's Number

Rob Bell:

No one ever calls me.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Who calls anyone?

Well, Sugar's about the only person who calls me.

 

Rob Bell:

What does he call you?

 

Tom Pellereau:

Yes, many things.

 

Jono Hey:

The world's complexity has just continued to increase exponentially.

We're interacting with so much every day, and yet our brains are still at the size of the Neolithic farming communities or the Roman armies, right?

 

Rob Bell:

This week, we're going to cover Jono's sketch that explains something called Dunbar's number, the typical number of people we can keep track of and consider part of our ongoing social network.

And according to anthropologist Robin Dunbar, this number sits at 150.

 

Tom Pellereau:

She was like, for a social person, you are really antisocial.

 

Rob Bell:

Hello and welcome to Sketchplanations, The Podcast.

We're back for another series.

The doors are open once more.

If you're a regular, come on in.

How have you been?

Here, have another stamp on your loyalty card.

Yeah, the weather has turned a little lately, hasn't it?

Well, you know where everything is, I'll let you get on.

And if you're new here, then welcome firstly

Feel free to have a little look around and I'll be right here if you need anything or if you have any questions.

I should say actually that everything we have in stock is out on display, but we do get a new delivery every Thursday.

What's that, sorry?

What kind of shop is this?

Oh, maybe think of it as a curious little emporium of miscellany.

Niche?

Yeah, I guess it is a little bit, yeah.

How long what, sorry?

How long can I keep this metaphor going?

Well, that's probably enough now, isn't it really?

No need to flog a dead horse.

 

Oh, only just to add that I'm Rob Bell, shopkeeper.

Over there with his calculator and log book is the manager and owner, Jono Hey.

And along any minute now should be, yeah, here he comes.

It's our earnest, inquisitive intern.

It's Tom Pellereau.

Good evening, my friends.

How are you?

 

Jono Hey:

Very good.

Hello.

People will genuinely wonder if they're missing like a track.

They're so convincing.

They're like, am I supposed to be hearing something?

Very impressive.

Have you ever done one of those fake conversations on a phone?

Yeah, in like in TV or something.

I always wonder if they're doing it on a film.

Is there somebody at the other end saying the answers?

 

Rob Bell:

Do you know when I do do that sometimes?

 

Is when I see someone coming towards me in the street who I don't necessarily want to talk to.

 

Out comes the phone.

 

Fake conversation.

 

Tom Pellereau:

You've blown that now, Rob.

 

Jono Hey:

He's never talking to anyone.

 

Rob Bell:

No one ever calls me.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Who calls anyone?

 

Well, Sugar's about the only person who calls me.

 

Rob Bell:

What does he call you?

 

Jono Hey:

Yes.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Many things as well.

 

But I don't know that she'll call back immediately and immediately again.

 

Rob Bell:

From the intro, though, which is something I genuinely don't know about either of you, have either of you ever worked in a shop?

 

Jono Hey:

Worked in a cafe.

 

Rob Bell:

Have you?

 

Tom Pellereau:

Yeah.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah.

 

I'd say that counts, kind of retail space, high street retail space.

 

When was that?

 

How old were you?

 

Jono Hey:

Gosh, it was a long time ago.

 

17, 18 maybe.

 

Probably 17, 16 or something.

 

Rob Bell:

Did you enjoy it?

 

Jono Hey:

It was all right, actually.

 

I think I learned a little bit from a summer of, we had sandwiches and coffee, so I'd press buttons on the coffee machine, but I didn't drink any coffee, so I had no idea if it was any good.

 

And...

 

Rob Bell:

Was this before the coffee revolution?

 

So there's only white coffee or black coffee?

 

Jono Hey:

I mean, there were more buttons, but most people didn't get used very much.

 

But we made sandwiches.

 

I remember I used to get to keep all the sandwiches that we didn't eat that day.

 

So I thought it was a great time.

 

Because if you finish it 9.30 at night and then eat four sandwiches, just because they're free.

 

Probably not the smartest.

 

Tommy?

 

Tom Pellereau:

I worked in pubs, did a lot of working in pubs.

 

Even at the uni bar, I worked there.

 

That was always great fun.

 

I really enjoyed working in a pub, working in a bar, chatting to people, taking their orders.

 

Yeah, in the final year, actually, weirdly.

 

Used to really enjoy that.

 

And it's just nice serving people, saying hello to people and also having something to do.

 

I quite enjoyed that part too.

 

Rob Bell:

I haven't.

 

Tom Pellereau:

You know.

 

You've worked in Buffalo Bills, Buffalo Grills.

 

Rob Bell:

The Buffalo Grill, yeah, that's a restaurant.

 

It's left the kind of, yeah, I guess so.

 

I mean, that was, I had to dress up like a cowboy, but awful, but I think, I think I'd quite enjoy working in a shop or a cafe environment.

 

Like you say, they're kind of the social side of it.

 

Chatting with everybody.

 

I'd want to make sure the counter and everything was very neatly and exactly presented.

 

I'd enjoy that, I think.

 

Jono Hey:

Where do you stand on chatting with people at the checkout in the supermarket?

 

Rob Bell:

I enjoy it.

 

Yeah.

 

Jono Hey:

A little conversation.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah, a little conversation.

 

I don't want to hold up proceedings for anyone behind.

 

I'm very conscious of that.

 

But no, I'm very aware of that.

 

But I like to acknowledge there's a person there.

 

Let's have a chat.

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah, brighten their day.

 

Rob Bell:

I find when you come back from America, if you've been over in America for whatever reason and you come back to the UK, I'm always really chatty to people behind the till or behind the counter or whatever.

 

And a lot of the time, you just get looked at a bit weird.

 

What's wrong with this guy?

 

Tom Pellereau:

Jono, is it you saying your dad has this sort of mini mission that he always tries to make someone smile and every has like insane visa?

 

Does he still do that?

 

Jono Hey:

That's a very good memory, yeah.

 

Yeah, no, he will still do that if he's at the checkout at the supermarket.

 

His little thing is, see if you can make the checkout person smile.

 

Rob Bell:

I like that.

 

Jono Hey:

Maybe cheer up the day.

 

Tom Pellereau:

That's cool.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah.

 

Jono Hey:

It's a bit embarrassing to be next to him sometimes.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Yeah, imagine being his son.

 

Jono Hey:

I mean, I just quietly pack up the shopping.

 

Pretend I'm on a phone call.

 

Rob Bell:

And walk off, just leave me.

 

I don't know who this guy is.

 

Jono Hey:

Some old guy.

 

Hi dad, welcome to season two.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah, hi Tony.

 

I mean, I totally appreciate there's more to it than just the niceties.

 

But well, a mutual friend of ours, Philly, sent me a photo on WhatsApp the other day of a place that he was visiting, a retail space, in this little town in Colorado, up in the mountains, where he's spent a bit of time with his family over the summer.

 

And it was a place called the Double Shot Cyclery.

 

So it's a bike shop come coffee shop by day, but it's a kind of speakeasy bar by night.

 

I thought, oh, that sounds like exactly the kind of place I'd love to own and run.

 

Jono Hey:

I mean, in a way, it's sort of a shame that I was thinking a lot of commercial properties are just sort of a bit wasted.

 

I remember thinking of the school, you know, like it's really busy till like four o'clock and then empty, there's massive building.

 

And if you could have more multiple use properties like that, make a lot more use of all this real estate.

 

Maybe it's a bit tricky, run a restaurant in a school.

 

Rob Bell:

Who ordered the mash?

 

Jono Hey:

School restaurant, school dinner restaurant.

 

Rob Bell:

I mean, Tommy, you run a brand now.

 

Would you ever have aspirations of having your like flagship brand store?

 

Tom Pellereau:

I would be amazing.

 

And some of the mega brands that I, you know, would dream of being, you know, the Dyson's, the Apple's and many in between have a flagship store somewhere.

 

And I remember speaking to a brand who I knew did have one who were pretty small and the amount of money they were losing from having this store was like...

 

Rob Bell:

They're mostly lost.

 

They are not lost either, aren't they?

 

Tom Pellereau:

Hundreds of thousands, like a month, they were losing from having this store.

 

It was like, oh, yeah, okay, we've got to be enormously big to be able to even consider that.

 

But maybe one day.

 

Rob Bell:

But I can picture it.

 

I can picture you swallowing around in there saying hi.

 

Yeah, that's me.

 

Jono Hey:

Standing next to the cardboard cutter.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Yes, Jono.

 

Right.

 

Yeah, I do think that probably everyone should work in retail of some form when they're when they're relatively young, just to appreciate it.

 

And probably everyone should also work in a call center just to appreciate the challenge of doing it.

 

It's like we used to do national services almost.

 

We should go and do certain things just to improve our kind of understanding and appreciation and that sort of stuff.

 

And certainly when we look to employ people, we do very much look at what other work they've done.

 

Have they worked in bars, restaurants, shops?

 

Because it's hard work and, you know, it's an important graph that you have to do, especially when you're young, I think.

 

Rob Bell:

Well, this is the start of a new series.

 

We won't dwell on that too much.

 

But I'm excited about where this series might take us, the things we might talk about.

 

We haven't completely finalized which sketches we're going to talk about yet.

 

But it's good, you know, with a with a with a new series, there's a new opportunity to, you know, switch things up, bring in some new signings, give the squad a bit of a boost.

 

I mean, we're going to keep everything pretty much exactly the same, but it's like, hang on, switch out the other two people.

 

At least we're recognizing there's an opportunity to do that.

 

And the fresh start effect comes to mind.

 

Episode five from last series, anything we can take from that, maybe.

 

Jono Hey:

No mumbling.

 

Rob Bell:

Do you think you mumble a bit?

 

Jono Hey:

Apologies if I mumbled.

 

Sorry.

 

I shan't mumble anymore.

 

It's my fresh start.

 

Rob Bell:

All right.

 

For anyone coming to us for the first time, just to set out the lay of the land, in this podcast, we'll be bringing you a series of, let's call them medium depth conversations about a whole host of different topics, guided by the wonderful collection of sketches that explain stuff from the world around us, created by our very own Jono Hey.

 

And they can all be found at sketchplanations.com.

 

And one thing we all really enjoyed from the first series was hearing from you, our listeners, with your comments and stories and examples of the things we've talked about.

 

And we want to encourage even more of that going forward.

 

And the best way to get in touch with this is via email.

 

Tommy, over to you.

 

Tom Pellereau:

At hello.

 

Oh, I messed that up because I said the at at the beginning.

 

Rob Bell:

Tommy, how can people get in touch with this?

 

Where would they send their e-mails?

 

Tom Pellereau:

Hello at sketchplanations.com.

 

Rob Bell:

We'll be going through the post bag of your messages, e-mails and comments at the very end of the episode.

 

Well, I've just done a quick check and I'm happy to report that our business rates have been paid for the month.

 

Nobody has any time off booked in.

 

And our Listen to One episode Get 15 free special offer has been a roaring success.

 

The conditions are perfect.

 

Let's seize the day.

 

Let's podcast.

 

This week, we're going to cover Jono's sketch that explains something called Dunbar's number.

 

The typical number of people we can keep track of and consider part of our ongoing social network.

 

And according to anthropologist Robin Dunbar, this number sits at 150.

 

Righty-ho, Jono, it's time to shine, may I say.

 

You're particularly bright light once again.

 

Talk us through Dunbar's number.

 

Where did you dig up this little gem?

 

Jono Hey:

You know, I was wondering that myself because I've known about it for a very long time.

 

And I remembered that where I first came upon it was Malcolm Gladwell's book, The Tipping Point, which I read a really, I mean, it came out in 2000, but I must have read it like 2002, 2003 or something like that.

 

And he gave this example of the company that makes Gore-Tex, like Gore and Associates.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Yeah, I don't.

 

I'm talking about Gore-Tex and I'm going to shut up because it's not DuPont.

 

Oh, just cut me out of that.

 

I was trying to work out where I'd remembered it from and it's that book, isn't it?

 

Jono Hey:

Yes.

 

It is, yeah.

 

So yeah, WL.

 

Gore and Associates.

 

And so they apparently discovered that they would build buildings, company buildings that fit 150 people.

 

And beyond 150 people, they discovered that various social problems would happen.

 

And so rather than make a bigger building than 150, they would, once that was full, they'd just make another building to fit 150.

 

And so obviously that was where I was introduced to it.

 

But reading a bit more about it, I think about it as the typical number of people we can keep track of and consider part of our ongoing social network.

 

And there's actually different scales of them and what I tried to show in the sketch.

 

Actually, I think I actually drew 150 heads.

 

Rob Bell:

I didn't stop and count them, but it's a lovely sketch.

 

I love how you've done it.

 

Jono Hey:

As I was trying to do this.

 

And I was making fun of it a bit, like in the sense that if you got one person beyond 150, you've no idea who they are.

 

Yeah.

 

Was the idea.

 

But there's actually different degrees.

 

And so you have like a smaller number of very close friends around five, something called your super family.

 

They're different names or your clan.

 

I think around 15, sorry, the clan is, and then the clan is 50 and then a tribe is 150.

 

And so you have these different sort of groups, but about 150 was about the number of people that we can just generally keep track of was the idea.

 

Rob Bell:

So yeah, that's interesting.

 

Because this, so it's Robin Dunbar, who I think first might have first proposed this officially through some research and I think research with others.

 

But I think it has been interpreted and poked about quite a bit by other social scientists and anthropologists.

 

So the, I mean, those numbers come up again and again, but the terminology that I'd seen was five loved ones, 15 good friends, 50 friends and 150 meaningful contacts.

 

So yeah, I guess that would fit in with the nomenclature you were using, Jono.

 

I like the tribe at the end, that's quite cool.

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah, I think there's a few different ones.

 

And I think Robin Dunbar was an evolutionary psychologist and I think it came from, he was studying all sorts of different groups through history, but also through, from, for example, primate communities and early humans.

 

So like Neolithic farming communities.

 

And so this number 150 comes up quite a lot, including in like the basic size of a unit of the Roman army.

 

And also, to this day, it's kind of interesting to think, and I think he proposed, he actually sort of calculated this, it's come to be 150, but based on the size of, I think it was the neocortex.

 

So different primate groups would have different size brains and then actually live in different size social groups, which I think is really interesting.

 

Rob Bell:

So then I've also seen that, and I don't know if this was part of Dunbar's research or others who've added to it, but it kind of goes on from 150 to 500, what I've seen referred to as acquaintances, and then 1500 people you'd recognize.

 

Roughly for humans is what's been proposed.

 

Jono Hey:

I wonder how you test that.

 

It's just quite fascinating, isn't it?

 

Tom Pellereau:

I wonder what the deviation is on that though, as it were, because I feel like some people know a lot more people and like having lots of friends and other people like having more closer friends.

 

So I imagine there's quite a deviation.

 

Maybe that's the medium, as it were.

 

Rob Bell:

So this is the beautiful thing, right?

 

So as I understand it, this research was done initially on non-human primates, as Jono was saying, associating the size of the neocortex or the size of the part of the brain that deals with thought and language to the size of their communities that they managed.

 

And it was done quite a bit through observing behaviors like grooming as a significant other being in that society.

 

But then when it's been projected onto human life, we get the kind of things that Jono's talking about there historically with Roman armies and like 11th century English villages, all this kind of thing.

 

But there's obviously, these are projections.

 

This is just a fun theory more than anything else, but it could be used effectively in things like business and society, I guess.

 

Jono Hey:

I like the way Dunbar mentioned about informally, the number is the number of people you wouldn't feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happen to bump into them in a bar.

 

Yeah.

 

Rob Bell:

Oh, that's nice.

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah, that's good.

 

Jono Hey:

So you know them well enough to do that.

 

Rob Bell:

150.

 

Whereas if it was one of your 500 acquaintances, you might go, oh, you'd probably go on the phone, wouldn't you?

 

Tom Pellereau:

I think so.

 

Rob Bell:

I think it's ringing.

 

You know, another one, another interesting one that I've seen it kind of related to that 150 is the size of your Christmas card list when you used to write Christmas cards.

 

Like my mom still writes Christmas cards and I reckon her Christmas card list is probably around that.

 

I should probably ask her.

 

Jono Hey:

That's a good point.

 

Yeah, my parents, they work for weeks on their Christmas cards.

 

It's a major operation.

 

But yeah, maybe it's around 150, I don't know.

 

Rob Bell:

But Tommy, you pick up on a really good point there that there are outliers and there will be huge variance within this and it will vary with different cultures as well as individuals as well.

 

Tom Pellereau:

That's a really good point in cultures.

 

And I wonder how social media and the ability to communicate has massively affected this.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah, hugely, hugely.

 

And so it's very different.

 

So, I mean, if you look at the difference between introverts and extroverts, I mean, it's probably not too far elite to say that most extroverts probably have a larger number of maybe slightly shallower relationships with people.

 

And introverts probably have a smaller number of deeper relationships.

 

I think the research also showed that women tend to have slightly more contacts within the closer layers than men.

 

But again, it depends where you're looking, I guess.

 

Tom Pellereau:

The thing I was trying to work out is the people who work for me or I work like, is this a personal or a business context, if you know what I mean?

 

Rob Bell:

Well, as Jono pointed out with the, who was it?

 

What was the company?

 

Did you put yourselves up into Gortex, you make Gortex?

 

Yeah, and I've read that the Swedish tax authorities have done that as well.

 

Split themselves into offices, physical offices of 150.

 

So what kind of problems are we looking at?

 

Or what kind of challenges are we looking at when it gets over and above 150?

 

I guess communication is a key one.

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah, well, as I said, it was about like within 150, you can have a relatively cohesive group and keep track of everybody.

 

And I think you can, obviously, we've, as a race, we can function many times beyond that.

 

But to do that, you need to start bringing in like norms and maybe rules or laws.

 

And so if you're creating an online community, you start to have, well, this is how you behave on here.

 

You can't do this or you get banned if you go do these actions.

 

But you don't necessarily need that at smaller group sizes, but you can obviously function much bigger than that.

 

But beyond that, you need to start having some rules.

 

But it's funny to think, it's funny, isn't it, to think of like, do you have rules between your close friends or your larger family?

 

Of course you don't, right?

 

You don't need them.

 

But maybe you do when your company gets to that size.

 

Or I don't know, if you're organizing 150 people to go to the festival.

 

Definitely think technology has a huge amount to play in this and it must be just changing it.

 

Because it was about brain size, right?

 

It was about like, what can we cope with in our brain?

 

And I feel like I worked with somebody and he had a really very sensible observation that the world's complexity has just continued to increase exponentially, essentially.

 

There's so much going on now.

 

We're interacting with so much every day.

 

And yet our brains have not.

 

And our brains are still at the size of the Neolithic, we're farming communities or the Roman armies, right?

 

But yet there's so much more going on.

 

And so actually it's just really difficult for us to keep up with this massive complexity that we're introducing in our world.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah, agreed.

 

It's a good point.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Somehow we do.

 

Rob Bell:

It's a very good point.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Somehow, right?

 

Because the people on social media have 50 million followers and somehow they managed to sort of communicate with them is that their tribe is that many.

 

Like Taylor Swift, she probably regard her tribe as those 50 million followers.

 

Jono Hey:

I don't think it's very two way there, is it?

 

Tom Pellereau:

Potentially agree with you.

 

Jono Hey:

I feel like you're more broadcasting when you're at that level.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah.

 

But it is interesting because Tommy, you raised, what's the effects of social media on this earlier?

 

And if you've got followers, it's very different.

 

It's a very different kind of conversation.

 

It's a very different relationship that you have with them.

 

Jono Hey:

I remember when I learned about this round about the time that Facebook was coming out.

 

And it does do some interesting things because your network at any one time, if you go back to your network at school, your network at university, and your network at your job naturally sort of change.

 

The people who you are maintaining relationships and spending time.

 

But Facebook does this funny thing of resurfacing these really old connections and potentially putting them right at the top above the people that you're seeing on a regular basis, week on week.

 

And I don't know if that has potential to expand the number or not, I don't know.

 

I mean, we have a limited amount of time that we can spend and actually interact with.

 

But by, I don't know, things like Strava, right?

 

Like you do a run and it goes up on Strava and somebody else sees it, who's from a quite a long way back in your history.

 

Maybe that expands our number.

 

Rob Bell:

I guess it's then about how much, how meaningful you interpret that interaction.

 

And I think, again, coming back to some research, it was found that younger generations-

 

Jono Hey:

To work on your citations, Robin.

 

Rob Bell:

I really do, I'm so sorry, everybody.

 

Whose work I am badly quoting or paraphrasing.

 

But research does show that younger generations associate more meaning to online relationships.

 

And so I guess some even purely online relationships to older generations, because, and I guess you could read into that, that for a lot of younger generations, life without the internet and without social media has never existed for them.

 

So whilst the number might increase and the potential for that number to increase, what depth, what level are those interactions and relationships at?

 

Jono Hey:

Around this time, I was also reading, I remember reading some really interesting research about the likelihood of collaboration within companies or, it wasn't just companies, it was also like academic institutions, like universities, and they did it by distance.

 

So they were like, okay, what's the likelihood of collaborating if you're in the same office?

 

The likelihood of collaborating if you're on the same floor?

 

The likelihood if you're in the same building, but different floor?

 

And the likelihood if you're in a different building?

 

And I don't have the numbers in front of me, but the striking thing was it just dropped off like, like, you know, the chances of you collaborating with the person in a different building to you, even if the building was right next door, was, it might have been, might as well have been in a different country.

 

And I was thinking, I was thinking about that research again recently, because I was thinking it's probably changed, like with all of the tools that we have and how common it is to be able to work remotely and how well connected you are with people who are not in the same location, but you're seeing them and meeting them and chatting with them every day.

 

And also the tools you have, like, even down to like emojis and things like that, to make a bit more of a connection than a formal email back and forth, right?

 

And, you know, now you can send voice memos and video notes and all that.

 

And I just think that's massively changed.

 

But I remember thinking that was, that research at the time was really fascinating to me.

 

It's like, if you're an, even if you're on the floor below, you might as well not be in the same institution.

 

You're not gonna collaborate.

 

But that's probably changing, I think.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah, because so much developed so quickly for companies in remote working.

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah, definitely.

 

I didn't actually know, I didn't actually check the size, but I think weddings are sort of interesting.

 

I mean, there's a lot of rules around weddings about who you invite and who you don't invite.

 

And it gets quite difficult, doesn't it?

 

It's when you're like, oh, well, we've only got 50 chairs.

 

So, you know.

 

Rob Bell:

It's not the chairs come to it.

 

Jono, there's a price tag on each of those chairs.

 

That's what it comes down to.

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah, there is, but I remember somebody in my lab at Berkeley was making some really cool software to visualize networks.

 

I don't know if you remember, but I took everybody on the guest list and put, I thought it'd be interesting to know, well, actually at a wedding, you know, it just looks like loads of people sat around loads of tables, but it'd be interesting to see at what parts of your life these people came from.

 

And they did, and we did like this sort of cluster diagram and put printed out and put it on the wall, which is very thinking back is very unusual thing to do at a wedding.

 

But it was quite interesting.

 

You had, I had, you know, some, some school friends, university friends, family friends, and, and family.

 

And sometimes the family had connections with some of the friends and some didn't.

 

But I do remember having two people who came, when you drew out this network, everybody was like all these clusters.

 

And then there were these two people off, off at the side.

 

And I had to like tuck them in.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Just find a, find a way.

 

Rob Bell:

Are they, are they the guys, are they the guys on the sketch, the guy over on the right-hand side there?

 

No, but I think, I think it's very natural for people, as you said, Tommy, for different people at different stages in our lives to kind of migrate between those different groups, both ways, depending on, you know, factors, depending on situations.

 

So I went through my, I went through my contacts in my mobile phone.

 

Yeah.

 

And I counted them.

 

And, you know, this is built up over, you know, when you get a new phone, it just kind of continues on.

 

Tom Pellereau:

The votes are in.

 

Jono Hey:

Took out the plumber.

 

Rob Bell:

So there's 852.

 

Right.

 

There were a couple of you.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Like, I've got hundreds that are just like Tom or Joe or...

 

Rob Bell:

I tend to put a bit more in than that.

 

Some of them didn't have surnames, but were a description of what that was.

 

There were at least a hundred, probably 150 within their, whose names I didn't even recognise anymore.

 

So that would bring me down to like, let's say like 600.

 

Yeah.

 

Yeah.

 

So I reckon that you would probably think then of the people in your contacts list on your phone is all your loved ones, your friends, your good friends, the people you want to maintain a friendship with, but it probably is your acquaintances, like right about around the 500 mark.

 

People you've done some business with maybe.

 

Tom Pellereau:

A few plumbers.

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah, exactly.

 

How did you feel about, you know, of those, let's say 500 people, would you have, if you came across them in a bar, unexpectedly, would you join them for a drink?

 

Would you feel comfortable?

 

Rob Bell:

No, cause that's the acquaintances.

 

And I think that matches with what we were saying earlier.

 

But if you were to look at the top 150 within there, I probably would, yeah.

 

And interestingly, and I know that I haven't updated this for about maybe three or four years, but you know, you can favor at certain contacts.

 

So they're always at the top.

 

I counted those up.

 

15.

 

Tom Pellereau:

We're either Jono or I am.

 

Jono Hey:

Go check their phone.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Jono was with Tom Watson.

 

Ooh, that's painful.

 

Rob Bell:

Bit awkward.

 

No, of course you were.

 

Jono Hey:

I've got 15 exactly.

 

Rob Bell:

Have you as well?

 

Tom Pellereau:

I think it's because you only allow 15 favorites, right?

 

Because there's a limit on the number of favorites you can have.

 

Rob Bell:

Jono, are you serious?

 

Jono Hey:

I'm serious.

 

Rob Bell:

That's amazing.

 

It's not amazing, it's just interesting.

 

It's fun.

 

Let's go with that.

 

Tommy doesn't favor anyone because he's the least social person.

 

He's the most anti-social social person.

 

Tom Pellereau:

He's the favorites bit.

 

I've got five, I've got seven, and two of them are my work.

 

Jono Hey:

I always like this idea for company stuff.

 

I like this idea of two pizza teams.

 

You familiar with that, Tom?

 

Tom Pellereau:

Yeah.

 

Rob Bell:

What's a two pizza team?

 

Jono Hey:

So it's basically, if you want to get a team to work on something, don't get the team size bigger than if you were going to have an evening social, it can be fed with two pizzas.

 

Tom Pellereau:

So two people.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah.

 

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking, Tom.

 

Jono Hey:

I was like, I can do one pizza.

 

Rob Bell:

And if there are leftovers of someone else's, I am in there.

 

Jono Hey:

Quite like cold pizza.

 

Rob Bell:

I'm on my own.

 

Tom Pellereau:

I am for this brain storm.

 

Rob Bell:

I'm feeling really full and pretty disgusting with myself.

 

Again.

 

Jono Hey:

This is why Rob is freelance.

 

Can't join any teams.

 

It's all the pizza.

 

Rob Bell:

So what, so a two pizza team.

 

So, I mean, if you're looking at that for people who aren't gluttonous, what are you looking at?

 

Like, I guess, six, seven, eight people.

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah, maybe a little bit less.

 

I think there's like a size where, very, very small teams, you don't have to coordinate very much.

 

And as you get the team bigger, you have to waste more time on coordinating the people in the team.

 

And so, there was a really nice concept I heard of not too long ago, Seth Godin introduced it, which to me, was a handshake overhead, which is also a thing in technology, I think, which is just like, literally, every person you meet requires a little bit of time and a little bit of attention to say hello and meet them and remember who they are and all that stuff.

 

And whereas if you've got small enough teams, your handshake overhead is really small.

 

Rob Bell:

Yes.

 

Yeah.

 

Are you wary of this, Tommy?

 

And I know with the size of your company, we're not at the 150 level, but are you wary of the size of the company and thus the additional functions that you might have to bring in to manage that population?

 

Tom Pellereau:

It makes a big difference.

 

And often you start with less than five and you get to five.

 

And I know a lot of founders who kind of hark back to those days when there were five or 15 of them with kind of really fond memories because everyone knew each other really well.

 

It was really easy to get stuff done.

 

There wasn't that massive handshake because the more people you have, the more HR you need, the more events you need, the more communication, the more you spend your life communicating rather than doing stuff.

 

And yeah, so it is a big, I think about it a lot and we've yo-yoed up and down and the difference in structures that we have to have as a larger team is really quite significant.

 

And personally, having grown up in small companies, that was quite challenging for me, I must admit.

 

What was challenging to start to grow and think about having the systems in place and actually even realizing that they were necessary, you know, firstly, that unconscious incompetence.

 

We must do a Sketchplanations of that one if we haven't done it.

 

The conscious incompetence, you know, the four different squares.

 

Jono Hey:

Not a very pretty sketch, but there is one, the conscious competence framework.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Yeah, probably a tricky sketch, just a matrix.

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah, did a long time ago.

 

So if we're gonna talk about it, we should probably at least explain what it is.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Save it for another day.

 

You got to listen to listeners, you got to listen to another episode, that one.

 

Rob Bell:

I was gonna round this off by asking if there's any other business to bring in on Dunbar's number that you'd thought of wanting to bring to the table.

 

And I'll start it off.

 

In looking at this and looking at, as I was saying earlier, this number might be quite different between cultures and different societies, different parts of the world.

 

I saw the acronym WEIRD, a weird society, W-E-I-R-D, which stood for Western Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic.

 

And it had been proposed that perhaps Dunbar's number applied mostly to weird societies.

 

Well, I hadn't seen that acronym before, weird.

 

Have you heard of that?

 

Tom Pellereau:

Yeah, it's very much like that's everyone we know, right?

 

Rob Bell:

Right, yeah.

 

Tom Pellereau:

I'm currently reading a book about geopolitics and it's talking me through the history of Saudi Arabia, the history of Pakistan, the history of these places that we didn't learn any history of those places at school, right?

 

So we had no kind of understanding.

 

And they're very different culturally, religiously, their beliefs.

 

And I think we often really underestimate how all of our thoughts and being is that democracy is great and is the only way forward and that, you know, and the rich development and everyone wants to be like us.

 

And that's not the case.

 

Jono Hey:

Sorry, travel is so valuable.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah, I agree.

 

Anything more on Dunbar's number?

 

Tom Pellereau:

I think I'd like to say that this was based on some science on the size of a certain part of our brain, right?

 

So I think it is quite a kind of almost like certain aspects of physics and gravity.

 

It's potentially actually constrained around something.

 

Maybe the pressure is on that we should know lots of people, we should have really, but I've found it quite reassuring.

 

You don't have to be kind of trying to be best buddy with hundreds of people, because probably your brain won't be able to handle it.

 

Rob Bell:

I think that's a good point.

 

I think I quite enjoyed that factor as well.

 

This is a kind of physiological limitation on this and the complexity that our brains can handle.

 

Tom Pellereau:

And so when you start a new class or a new job, there's going to be loads and loads of people that will be really quite mentally taxing at the beginning until you kind of find your group within that potentially.

 

Jono Hey:

I think there's a few times in your life are quite precious in a way where you're really open to new connections.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah.

 

Yeah.

 

Jono Hey:

If I think of those times, like when I moved to the US and when I went to university in particular, and some degree when I moved back to the UK, I was very conscious that you're just like, there's just a couple of people around here that you know.

 

So it's gonna be a weird life if you just have those couple of people.

 

Like, let's go meet some people.

 

Let's go build my circle.

 

Rob Bell:

But then it gets to a point and your brain goes, whoa, how are you doing, mate?

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah, my parents lived in a number of different places.

 

Maybe that's the problem with their Christmas card list.

 

Tom Pellereau:

They've got 150 in four different places.

 

Jono Hey:

I don't know what these countries are, man.

 

Yeah.

 

It needs a spreadsheet to keep track.

 

Rob Bell:

Or we just need a bit of a purge every now and then, maybe.

 

You know, a bit of a spring clean.

 

Well, the end of our exploration of Dunbar's number signifies closing time for this episode.

 

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Next week, we'll be back talking about the four pillars of too much.

 

Too much what, I hear you ask.

 

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