Dormant Ties
the people you used to know are your most underrated asset
Grounded in the research on Wikipedia: Interpersonal ties / Levin, Walter & Murnighan, 'Dormant Ties: The Value of Reconnecting' (2011)
name it
A dormant tie is someone you used to be close with and just... stopped talking to. Not a stranger, not a current friend — a relationship that went cold. The old teammate, the mentor from two jobs ago, the friend you drifted from. The connection isn't dead, it's asleep. And the trust you built back then doesn't evaporate. It just sits there, waiting, unused.
the study
In 2011 Daniel Levin, Jorge Walter and Keith Murnighan ran the actual experiment: they made executives reconnect with people they hadn't spoken to in 3+ years and rate the advice they got. The dormant ties gave them better, more novel, more useful input than their current active contacts. Translation — the people you stopped talking to became more valuable while you were away, not less.