stream of connections
Your LinkedIn network is a value stream. Recent contacts are flow;
the rest is work-in-progress, inventory, or dead stock. Drop your
Connections.csv and watch your social graph render as a
Value Stream Map — recruiters flagged as bottlenecks, dormant ties as
waste, frequent contacts as the part actually moving.
export from linkedin:
Settings → Data privacy → Get a copy → Connections or paste below
total connections—
avg lead time—
bottlenecks—
inventory turnover—
connection bottleneck (recruiter / talent) →flow direction (oldest → freshest)
vsm vocabulary, applied to humans
- flow — connected within 6 months. The part of your network in motion.
- WIP — 6–12 months. Recent enough to mean something, stale enough to need a nudge.
- inventory — 1–2 years. Sitting on a shelf. Worth something only if turned over.
- dead stock — 2+ years. Carrying cost. Most people accept the connection request out of guilt.
- lead time — months since the connection was made (proxy for staleness).
- bottleneck — roles like recruiter / talent / sourcer. They throttle throughput when they own the channel.
- inventory turnover — fraction of contacts in flow vs. total. High turnover = a network that compounds.
Lean manufacturing has spent fifty years staring at the gap between capacity and flow. Your LinkedIn graph is mostly capacity. The interesting question isn't how many connections you have — it's how many are moving.