Reconnecting and Reinventing Business Networking First of a Two-part Series – Next Edition: Reinventing the Professional Association and Global Networking by K. Jack Speer, The Delta Associates Does Anyone Really Have Time to Network? It’s Time to Lay Some Plans Who do you know that you can count on to help you in your own career? We all need to answer that question today and every day.

K. Jack Speer President The Delta Associates

Obviously it’s not necessarily the people where you work.  This week (December 4) Enron in Houston sent home 4,000 employees and told them they would call the ones they wanted to come back. You’d have to live under a rock not to have been reading that Enron was number three in the Fortune 500 list a year ago—one of the most powerful corporations in America.

There are few of us who would not say we’d like to be better networked. Now is the time to develop our personal gameplan.

Begin Your Networking Gameplan with Personal Competency Networking is being able to get in the front door. "A familiar name usually gets me some air time," says Charles Williams, Human Resources, of the City of Austin. "The person on the other end will stop typing on the keyboard or pause for a minute to hear my request." Yet you’re not going anywhere without business skills. "If you haven't got a compelling business model [or personal skills and experience] that helps the customer improve his or her business or bottom line," says John Schofield, President and CEO of Advanced Fibre Communications, "I don't think networking matters at all."

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"In this tough, competitive world, who you know might open a door or two, but if you can't ‘deliver the goods’ better than the other guy, you are not going to get the business. As much as the ‘who you know,’ if not more, you had better know the ‘what’ of your customer’s business."

2001 Has Suddenly Gotten People to Ask Themselves, "Who Do I know?"

Some people have consistently worked hard on maintaining their networks.

But for many, during the decade of the 90s, networking was definitely on the backburner. Employment opportunities were everywhere. Executives were committed to family and personal fitness. When the rude awakening of ’01 occurred, many have found themselves isolated.

"People in companies can be pretty insulated," says Julie Stover, of Cirrus Logic. "When RIFs (reductions in force) come along, it’s vital to have contacts. Some people are trying to do five years of networking in a few months."

The Big Double-Bind in Networking: Americans Now Hold the Record for Working the Most Hours Business culture has been stacked against networking and developing the kind of relationships we need in business—and the culture, as a whole, works against general relationships.

Americans now work more hours than any other country on the globe, even Japan. Women continue to shatter the glass ceiling and are joining the ranks of senior management—yet they also continue to do the heavy lifting at home as Mom. Their counterpart executive husband often also carries a major co-role as childcare provider.

Americans are "Bowling Alone"— Traditional Networks are Long Gone—The Coffee Break is Dead

As a business culture, we need to resurrect and reinvent networking. We know that we have to get results through people on teams. We must also have a team of people—a network—that will help us achieve our personal and professional goals.

I believe this is the underlying issue in networking. We have become individual isolationists in the workplace to the point that networking can seem dangerous to us. We have to recommit to people, to knowing those beyond our narrow boundary of relationships.

Sandy Dochen, Texas Public Affairs Manager, Corporate Community Relations, IBM-Austin, cites Robert D. Putnam’s 1995 book, "Bowling Alone," that has the thesis that Americans today don’t join groups as they did in previous generations. Putnam uses the metaphor of bowling for American interaction. Bowling has increased, but the number of bowling leagues has declined sharply. Americans prefer to "bowl alone."

Americans don’t feel as comfortable as they once did with each other. Our solutions have generated problems. We have been warned against sexual harassment so much that it’s better to avoid interaction with everyone. Many people in our BizWatch survey expressed deep suspicion of anyone in the workplace. We have been taught that volunteer activities keep us from the bottom line. We have given so many hours in the workplace, we can’t give anything else.

Killing the Coffee Break and Happy Hour, While Wounding the Business Luncheon We’ve been losing time for networking for at least a couple of decades. The 1980s was the generation that killed the coffee break. Young professionals finally decided they wouldn’t spend 30 minutes a day, morning and afternoon, with a bunch of old farts because they were on the way to the future. The next generation killed "happy hour." Nobody has time for that anymore, and expense accounts don’t cover it. Business luncheons linger on, but with much less frequency than they used to. Deals rarely get made over dessert—in fact, many people use the hour-plus they used to spend on business luncheons out jogging or at the corporate gym.

Professional Associations Offer Limited Opportunities

Many of us used to attend four to six conferences a year with industry associates who formed a tight peer group. Larry Milner, President of Global Strategies and past association executive, confirms that attendance and participation has plummeted in local associations, as well as state and national conventions. Conferences are still attended, but the "heavy hitters" often don’t congregate at traditional association conventions. Often those who attend are fairly new to management. You find few VPs and CEOs schmoozing the crowd and making stirring speeches.

Large professional associations lack the ability to deliver connectivity. Chambers of Commerce in large metropolitan areas rarely are the places to get noticed by the community power players who can point you to a position on the executive team or help you close a deal.

Networking—What Works Today?

The following are some elements of a networking strategy that you might want to use.

1. Take a Look at the Way you View and Value People. If you don’t find people interesting and enjoy communicating with them, networking is irrelevant for you. You need to break down the wall you have built around your soul.
   
   Think about it. If you are a person who walks down the halls at work, avoiding everyone’s eyes except the person you want to see, networking won’t work for you. If you go on vacation, to church, or synagogue, to school events, to the supermarket, and your goal is to make as little human contact as possible, you’ll never care enough about other people to network.
   
   We are a generation that is good at "turning on" in groups and developing a PowerPoint presentation that impresses. We have to get interested in human interaction.
   


2. Develop Trust in Business Relationships. Trust, comfort, and loyalty are making a comeback. Mayor Pro Tem Jackie Goodman, of Austin, Texas, says, "Because this is the real world, ‘dog-eat-dog’ will probably never go out of style, but I think ‘greed’ is not as effective as it used to be." We have to develop relationships that work to build trust relationships with those we meet.
   
   People’s track records for trust are not great. People often don’t deliver what they promised, stab you in the back, and act like they love you just before they ask you to put up five thousand dollars to join their multi-level marketing scheme. People have every right to be wary of other people.
   
   If you are trustworthy, people will extend you a helping hand. Liz Hopkins, VP of Human Resources for Litton Loan Servicing put it this way: "For me, most new relationships are formed on the basis of trust. I trust the current relationship not to steer me in the wrong direction. Of course there are times when I've had to resort to finding assistance on my own, but that still comes down to trust--trusting what my guts are saying about that assistance."
   
   Arnie Allen, President of IMPACT Executive Placement, puts it this way: "It probably gets down to two adjectives - trust and comfort. People want to do business with those people they like, and how you like someone of course varies, but in my mind it is made up of trust and comfort."
   


3. Use Networking and the Email Revolution. Arnold Garcia, Editorial Page Editor of the Austin American Statesman, put it to me quite simply. "What is one of the first things that people ask you when you first meet them? What’s your email address?"
   
   Everyone knows that email has revolutionized the world. Gone are many of the telephone calls and the drop-ins--and conventional mail is now categorized as "snail mail."
   
   Here are some suggestions about using email effectively.

Use email to thank, congratulate, express friendship, and exchange ideas. It can be better than a handwritten note. Something nice just pops up on your screen and keeps you going the whole day.

Write an attention-grabbing Subject Line. In our research many executives and elected officials tell us they read or delete an email based on the subject line, without going into the body. Think about what is the vital point in your email that could strike a nerve and put it into the subject line. If you're selling a solution the subject line might be, "I think I may have the answer." If you're warning of a danger your could write in the subject line, "This could be the big one." With the right subject line you can assure that your recipient will open the email because you've given them a reason to wonder what you're going to say next.

Keep emails brief. It’s too easy to hit delete.

Email regularly, but not too frequently. I was receiving an electronic publication that had some really good information and I often enjoyed it, but they sent it out every day. I got off the list.

Learn to write a good email. People will read well-written emails that contain information important to the recipient. Humor is as key as it is in face-to-face conversation. Email is more forgiving on grammatical usage, because we all know we write in a hurry. Yet, I personally don’t like an email that is filled with the lower case "i" instead of I. I take it as a mild form of disrespect.

Don’t write to a group email with email addresses showing at the top. My ego tells me this person doesn’t want to write to me personally, and many people feel it is giving out your email address.

If you have something really negative to say to a person, never say it in email. For some reason, people can be much more insulting in email. It’s really a quirky aspect of the medium of which I have been guilty.

Be aware of the negative vibrations caused by an unanswered email. If you're getting 300 emails a day, it may not be possible to answer them all. The other day, however, I wrote a thoughtful, very short email to a company vice president about the services of our company. We had a referral from someone she knew--no answer. 

The person could have simply written, "Thanks for the information." That would have been enough. The lack of answer to my email will probably never have any negative effects on this person, but with a one sentence answer of recognition of my email, I would have become an ally.

I have email contact with thousands of people in any given year. I probably have as many email contacts in one year as I have had face-to-face contacts in some decades.

There are disadvantages, however, to emails. Email is addictive. You can spend too much time on it and you may prefer your email exchanges to personal visits. You may find yourself irritated when someone calls you or wants to see you. You say to yourself, "Why couldn’t they have just put that in an email?"

4. Cultivate Your Old Friends and Contacts

   Several BizWatch readers tell me that "the old friends are the best friends." One senior manager of a large publicly held company told me he has kept up with friends and associates since law school and through his career. He says he relies most on them. From time-to-time, they call him and he is able to refer them to someone who may be the contact they need to answer a question or solve a problem.

   The same thing is true of Jeff Rosen, Vice President of Operations, Advanced Fibre Communications. Although Jeff is not constantly in contact with them, when he needs recommendations or referrals, he calls on old associates and bosses. Arnie Allen, President of IMPACT Executive Placement, says that one of his first emphases is in maintaining not only contact with people, but maintaining a personal relationship.