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May 18, 04:59 pm: Networking Your Networked Network

I send a lot of email. I get a lot of email. I’m like, oh, everybody else I know. Oh, I say, I’ve got too much email. I triage assiduously . Flag for follow up. Delete. One word answers. “Skip,” I wrote in an email recently. Only the one word answer emails get out promptly. I subscribe to listservs that come in and get – thank you filters – filed in a folder buried in another folder and occasionally – occasionally! – I make Outlook groan under the strain of deleting them. Unread. Sometimes, I’m telling you a secret now, sometimes I just delete everything that’s over a month old. If it’s really important, I tell myself, they’ll get back to me. Like everybody else I know, I’d really like to get my inbox to zero.

I have business cards. Stacks and stacks of business cards. My own and other peoples. I’m horrified when I reach and discover I’m out of business cards. It’s like my holster is empty. I come back from conferences and meetings and even parties with business cards. _Oh-, I say, I’ve got to do something with these business cards And occasionally – occasionally! – if the collection coincides with a long plane ride and my overflowing inbox depresses me too much, I’ll enter the business cards into Outlook. Those end up being just like the ones I toss in a drawer in my office.

I figure my own business cards and emails are sitting in drawers and being deleted and not out of malice. Maybe it’s out of boredom or a discussion that I thought was better than it was. Mainly, though, it’s just out of being busy.

But we have to network. I have to network. Guy Kawasaki tells me to network. I go to events to network. He tells me there’s an art to networking. I try to work the art. I shake hands. I say, “What are you working on?” I listen and nod. I think, This is interesting. I say, Tell me more. I want to store it away. I don’t know why exactly. Business cards and emails come out of these but we all know what happens to there.

And sometimes I get the it-was-great-meeting-you emails. I think, How good this person is. A short note to remind me of our talk. I think, They are getting the art right. They got my business card. I know they sent the same note to a whole lot of people. But still. The business cards didn’t just go in a drawer. Until, the third time I meet them. Or, the fourth. When I get the exact same note. Like we’ve just made acquaintance for the first time. An art, sure. Like Thomas Kincaid is art.

So, what do I do after the networking? What do I do with the interesting things. Throw the business cards into a drawer. Keep plugging through the email. Stuck in the daily grind of the one word answers. “Go,” I write a lot in emails. I write, “Hold.”

I’ve been asking myself this a lot lately. Nose-to-the-grindstone-crazy-busy with NetSquared. So, I was pretty interested to see a recent ChangeThis manifesto, The Care and Feeding of Networks.
CareFeedingOfNetworkCopyright.

Here’s the secret: introductions.

Two authors: Bob Allard and Richard Banfield. They help people to network professionally. Banfield, a “serial entrepreneur,” has a website out at http://youshouldmeet.com. I’m just saying: you’re going to need water to wash down the grain of salt.

But, still, introductions. They are great. They are useful to people. I thought you’d find this article interesting, or here’s a job I think you might like, or here’s a person that seems like you should know. Introductions. Giving something of worth that shows that you are listening. If the emails in my inbox were all about that, I’d be a hell of lot quicker to respond. In fact, the emails are too often here’s-what-you-can-do-to-help me. And it’s going to take a lot of your time. And I’m going to be unclear about the reason you should be remotely interested. Too many of the emails that I send are like that. Asking. Asking. Asking. Not making it easy for people to give the one word answer I’d like to hear: “Sure.” When do I pull out the old stack of business cards? When I have a paragraph in an email that starts “Here’s what you can do to help.”

Introductions.

Blogs, it seems to me, are a great way of, this is a horrible word, scaling those introductions. Here’s information I think you’ll find useful. Here’s a project I think you’d like. You can even point it to a single person – a blogger you read, for example – but make it publicly available in case, you know, someone else would find it interesting. It doesn’t all have to be about email. It shouldn’t all be about email. Or the Internet even. Sometimes it can be about hosting a dinner of people who might be interested in a topic and so might be interested in other people who are interested in a topic. MeetUp is, essentially, a networking tool. Upcoming. It’s all about making introductions.

This may be no big shakes to some people. But it really was an eye-opening-sit-up-in-bed epiphany. I’m bad at networking, I tell myself. I’m shy. Networking is about listening. Attentively. Not listening while scanning name tags or looking over someone’s shoulder to find someone better to talk to. Better=higher up the food chain. Better=able to do something for me. Better=equals someone who can get one of those “here’s how you can help me” emails.

So, listening, introducing broadly and publicly. Sharing. That can’t be that hard. Can it?

tagged: network, scale, management, relationships