Conversely, who you are and who you know and socialize with away from your company...both within your industry and within the community-at-large...can foster your career.
Some people ignore the outside world until their career runs into difficulty. Only then do they launch a frantic program of polishing old contacts and networking new ones. Don't make that mistake. Learn to live your life so that you continually renew and expand relationships outside your company.
The legitimate claims on your time and attention made by your family and close personal friends, added to what every employer expects from an upwardly-mobile executive, leave very little time for career-enhancing contact with people you don't see at work.
But you do have a few minutes. This chapter suggests ways you can leverage that small fund of time, so that it will pay large dividends in both career progress and personal satisfaction.
Raise your profile. Know and be known!
Unfortunately this cliché is usually spoken bitterly by one of the many losers of the world. He or she is simultaneously making an excuse, and framing an accusation, as to why someone better-connected or more widely well-thought-of has just received a promotion or a new job he or she felt entitled to.
How sad!
Not sad that the loser didn't win. But sad that, knowing one of the many perfectly legitimate reasons winners do win, the loser took no steps to foster his or her own valuable network of personal contacts.
The business world...and society in general...is not a meritocracy in which the wisest and most virtuous person will be sought out from obscurity and escorted to a position of leadership.
Far from it. We all tend to give opportunity and responsibility to people we already know and like. We also tend to give consideration to people warmly recommended by others we know and trust. And we give more attention to strangers who are prominent in their field, than to anonymous strangers who may be equally- or perhaps even better-qualified.
Trade associations provide a wealth of contacts.
Don't pass up the chance to represent your company in trade association activity. In many companies, association functions are looked down upon, and second- and third-echelon people are often sent because higher-ups are "too busy." Resist any status-minded temptation to be "too busy."
Go. You'll come back knowing people who work for your competitors. If they're high-level and highly impressed with you, someday they may be sources of career opportunity. And if they're lower-level, but able, they may be prospective employees you can hire later on. Even if they're lower-level and unimpressive, you may suddenly find that you need information, and they'll be willing to supply it.
You should always be able to check your phone book or card-file and identify someone you can phone within every competitor. Wherever your contacts aren't yet ideal, keep upgrading as the years go by.
Seminars and Conferences
Not only does it make sense to attend seminars and conferences as a means of collecting valuable contacts, you can benefit even more from participating. Accept invitations to appear in forums and panel discussions. That may be the quickest possible way to become well known in your industry.
And don't "hang back" waiting to be invited to be a panelist. When you're still young and have most reason to want the publicity, you're least likely to be asked.
After this year's event, and before work on next year's gets underway, write or phone the president of the association and/or the designated chairman of the next meeting. Say what you thought were this year's highlights. And then describe a unique new subject area, or a new twist for a traditional event, which you feel would greatly interest the membership. If you phone, follow up with a written description, which can be conveniently circulated to gather opinions and support.
Creative ideas for association meetings are extremely hard to find, and few people are willing to help. If your attitude is helpful, rather than pushy, chances are the powers-that-be may like your idea and may ultimately ask you to execute it. Even if they go ahead with someone else in charge, you'll probably be one of the key participants.
If you become the leader, you've got a license to make very high-level contacts in soliciting panelists...possibly even CEOs. Even as a participant, you gain exposure and make fine contacts. No longer just a face in the crowd, you're on your way to prominence.
Consider starting your own association.
An outrageous idea? It's done all the time. People and companies who have something to gain by it start a new association.
When companies do it, they usually promote an organization of users and potential users of their products or services. Once identified by association membership, these prospective customers are easier to reach with direct mail campaigns to the general membership list, with ads in the association's publications, with booths at conventions, etc.
Examples: a leading computer manufacturer has fostered organizations of EDP professionals within various industries, such as insurance and accounting. And an insurance company very successfully launched America's leading national association of retired people, in order to promote its insurance policies for people over 65.
When a group of individuals promotes a new association, there's often a double agenda:
- They see a valid purpose for the organization...essential, or it won't attract membership, and
- They see themselves acquiring professional prominence by being the instigators...and probably the initial officers...of an association representing their field. Instantly they appear to be acclaimed by their peers as top-echelon people.
Amazingly, I've never seen a group of reasonably-credentialed executives fail in an effort to start a new association. On the other hand, I've never seen anything but failure when one self-seeking individual tries to start an association, just so he or she can head it. A solo grab for status is too obvious and obnoxious to attract a following.
Frankly, I could list at least a half-dozen thriving associations started by groups of founders who star-dusted themselves, while setting up useful organizations that have survived and thrived. How deliberate and how accidental was the personal advantage? No one can say. The fact is that all of these people achieved something valuable for their profession. If they simultaneously gained something for themselves, it was a fitting reward.
Although I can't name the current crop of organization-starters in this context without offending some of them, I'll share one example which is now ancient history.
In the mid-'60s a handful of self-proclaimed "young influentials" in the field of consumer products marketing named themselves "Cabal" and "by invitation only" attracted one or two other such rising "superstars" from each of the most prestigious New York-based consumer products manufacturers and advertising agencies. Purpose: "To meet and hear off-the-record talks" by chief executives of leading companies and agencies.
Despite skepticism about both the premise and prospects of the new organization, I accepted my "invitation." What followed were three years of fascinating monthly luncheons at the Harvard Club, as one after another of the CEOs of America's largest corporations and agencies showed up to address less than 40 middle managers. And during that whole time, the same five or six people who conceived the project held the offices of the group, contacted the speakers, greeted and introduced them, and sat with them at the head table.
So if the Trilateralists, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the leading trade association in your industry haven't beckoned, you might consider joining with several congenial co-founders to start a new association.
Write your way to prominence.
Perhaps you can be one of the lucky few to author an article of interest to the Harvard Business Review, or some comparably eminent publication. But even if your expertise is too specialized and your profile as yet too low for such a celebrated journal, you can probably come up with something for a trade paper in your industry.
Once you've seen yourself in print, it's an experience you'll want to repeat. And each time the writing will become easier. Moreover, having appeared as a published "authority," you'll be called for quotable commentary by professional writers and reporters who prepare for their articles by reading prior ones.
Indeed, if you really have something to say, maybe you should write a book. A couple individuals I know wrote books on the principles of their industry while still only upper-middle managers. The books were successful, and helped widen the distance between them and their peers. Today both have the title President. One heads the company he joined fresh out of business school. And the other is a man I recruited as president of a small entrepreneurial company, which he has since built into the number-one company in America in its field.
Outside board memberships provide contacts and prestige.
Obviously, you'd be delighted to be asked to join the board of a major NYSE-listed corporation, and maybe someday you will. Certainly that's more likely if you rise to the top of the company you're working for, and if you continually take steps to broaden your network of personal contacts.
Meanwhile, however, an excellent interim career-development move would be to join the board of a small growth-oriented company. Such an opportunity is well within the reach of virtually every $100,000+ executive who makes a point to be as widely connected as possible. Chances are, you already know several presidents of smaller and medium-sized companies, who might be inclined to think of you for their boards, if they only had an inkling of your interest.
And why not a non-profit directorship? There are many relatively young and struggling charitable and cultural organizations which, unlike the venerable institutions, aren't yet dominated by mega-donors and directors from the second and third generations of the same families. Not only can you be a more significant and higher-level supporter of a young institution, you may even find its mission more pertinent and exciting.
Don't shirk fund-raising duty.
The valuable contacts you'll make as a supporter and potentially a board member of a charitable or cultural institution won't be limited to other supporters and officers. In all likelihood, you'll be pressed into service trying to line up contributions from corporations and wealthy individuals. Don't resist.
Awkward as fund-raising may initially seem, it will gradually fill your address book with some prominent contacts...particularly if you stress the corporate side, and try to get the business leaders you approach to participate in the institution, rather than just add it to their companies' "contributions" list.
Club your anonymity to death!
Probably you already belong to a respected country club and a city luncheon club. If not, you certainly should. But if you're like most of us, you probably spend very little time at either place. And when you do go, you're usually entertaining an outside guest.
From now on, make it a point to participate in the annual golf or tennis tournament, and other general-membership events, as a means of knowing more of your fellow members. And when you don't have any other lunch date, try sitting at the "club table" of your city club. Sure, you'll meet some dullish habitués. But you'll also meet some very interesting people you'd never have become acquainted with any other way.
Also consider moving some of your otherwise solitary, or socially "throw-away," pursuits to an athletic club. Instead of taking a lonely morning jog along the road near home, why not come into the city early and, using the club as your base, run in the park? You'll join lots of other executives in this ritual, and several may turn out to be valuable business and social contacts. Same goes for your thrice-weekly work-outs doing aerobics, machines, or weights, and your lap-swimming, which you can readily switch from a strictly commercial gym to a club frequented by lots of folks in your community you really should get to know. And when you're at the club, why not sign up for a team sport or substitute a pick-up game of tennis or some one-on-one basketball for your usual workout, whenever the opportunity presents itself? You'll get to know a lot more people that way.
One very successful and athletically-inclined CEO of a New York-based Fortune 500 corporation can almost always be found both before and after his 9:00 to 5:30 workday at a prestigious athletic club engaged in strenuous competition with other members of his management team. In fact, over the past decade or so of his presidency, his key aides have been winnowed by Darwinian selection into a group of brainy jocks, who can not only challenge him intellectually in the office, but also athletically at "the club." More than one fine athlete from "the club" has found employment in the corporation. And, except for several women (he's lately become enlightened), almost all of the top-level executives he's recruited have been men who work out at "the club."
One final suggestion: If you travel to the same city fairly often, consider a non-resident membership in one of its leading clubs. Or maybe your present city club has reciprocal privileges. Your athletic routine can be accommodated better than at a hotel; you'll probably make some valuable contacts; and reservations will be less of a hassle when trade shows and conventions clog the city. Accommodations may be Spartan, but certainly not unacceptable.
Take the initiative in meeting people who interest you
At your current level of achievement and prestige, you're already in a position to make overtures toward people you think may share a mutual interest. Don't hesitate. The worst you'll suffer is rejection...something you should learn to accept, if you haven't already.
When you read an article about someone who's just pioneered a new technology that may have future application in areas you deal with, write a note of appreciation and follow it up with an invitation to lunch. Introduce yourself to the conference speaker whose point of view seems so congenial, and suggest meeting later for a drink. Set up an appointment to meet the dean of a nearby business school; perhaps some of your business problems can become his or her graduate students' research projects, with mutual benefit. If you've admired the work of a sculptor, or a novelist, or a conductor, call or write to say so. You may establish an acquaintance that can broaden your horizons and give you a new perspective. If not, what have you lost?
And if there's someone you particularly want to know, don't hesitate to use your skill at networking to make contact. Gaining a personal introduction through networking is a technique that needn't be reserved just for job-changing.
Personal contacts are one of your most valuable resources.
We've all heard that as a rationalization for not getting a promotion or a new job the speaker felt he or she should have had. Totally wrong-headed, in my opinion.
Don't let the career orientation of this book and the usual meaning of the "who-you-know" cliché obscure the greatest value of a strong and constantly-expanding personal contact network. It's not just a set of "connections" that may help get you hired. After all, you'll change jobs only a few times during your career. Meanwhile, your personal contacts are useful to you...and you're useful to them...every single day, and in every facet of your life.
The nearest analogy to a strong and wide-ranging network of personal contacts is a good education. Someone very wise said this about education:
Following that line of reasoning, a good contact network is far better than a good education. For when you have others to whom you freely lend your knowledge and who freely lend you theirs, then you literally have the benefit of hundreds of different educations, career specializations, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, creative insights, and general data banks from experience and life. The limits of your knowledge and ability to cope are infinitely expanded.
Do you want to find out about the performance of a potential supplier or distributor, about the attitude of a governmental agency, or about the most respected authority on an emerging technology? With a good contact network, answers are a phone call away.
Or do you want to know which heart surgeon the best doctors in your city would choose if they were being operated on, or which local contractor has the best reputation for building swimming pools that withstand your area's harsh winters, or where to send your son to college to study international trade? Again, an authoritative answer to each question should be just one or two phone calls away.
Be someone who knows others, and whom others consider worth knowing. Have good contacts, and be a good contact.
The Challenge: To Keep in Touch
It's not only a pleasure, but also a great benefit, to know more and more people. People you can call on for assistance and expertise, and people who know they can call on you for the same favors.
The great problem is how to keep in touch with so many people, when you hardly have time to see and enjoy your closest friends. Indeed, as a busy and upwardly-mobile executive, you may sometimes be forced to give your own family less time and attention than they deserve. How, then, can you hope to keep in touch with business and social contacts? Must you always approach them like this?
You can't go on forever, getting in touch only when you want something. Or at least you shouldn't. But what can you do?
Well, one thing's certain. You can't keep in touch with leisurely lunches and long, chatty phone calls. You just don't have the time nor does the other person, in most cases. And often the connection isn't intimate enough for such a strong dose of togetherness, anyway.
So what's your strategy? Obviously, something thoughtful but less time-consuming. Here are some suggestions:
Make quick, spontaneous phone calls.
When you see something that reminds you favorably of one of your contacts, grab the phone and say "Congratulations," "Bravo," "Well done."
Maybe it's a shrewd acquisition, an ingenious sales promotion, a terrific new commercial, a compelling speech, a scholarly journal article, a quickly-settled labor negotiation, a successful stock offering, a newly-issued patent...or maybe just an unusually handsome new paint job on the house, a rare second-place finish in "Class B" golf at the club, a 12-inning Little League win, or a daughter's acceptance at Yale Law School. The fact that you noticed...and smiled to yourself...is enough reason to call. Give voice to the thought!
And when an assistant or a machine answers, your brief "thought-of-you-and-decided-to-call" call can be brief indeed. Chances are you won't get through. That's fine. Just leave your message:
Shouldn't that have been your previous call, rather than another request for free legal advice?
Let the Postal Service help.
Some of the most successful executives are those who've learned how to use the mails to keep in touch with large numbers of business and personal contacts. This method of renewing acquaintance needn't take a large investment of time, since your secretary does most of the work. Nonetheless it's extremely effective, because you can periodically cover your entire list of contacts, to make sure that nobody gets left behind.
Indeed, annually mailing something "first-class" to all your contacts insures you against inadvertently losing anyone you haven't been in touch with recently. If some of your contacts have moved, the Post Office will probably forward your mailing, and you'll provoke updates from people you're not current with. And if the time for postal forwarding has elapsed, your envelope "returned-to-sender" will alert your assistant to get on the phone and track the person down.
Send holiday cards.
A lot of people are delighted to see the recent decline in the custom of sending Christmas and Chanukah or New Year's cards. That's an understandable feeling, if you're an at-home parent with a ten-room house and three children between the ages of 4 weeks and 5 years to take care of. But if you're an upwardly-mobile business executive with a private secretary, maybe you should think again.
Renewing valued associations at least once a year is a small price to pay in gratitude for past courtesies and in anticipation of possibly asking favors in the future. How many years can legitimately go by without a note or a phone call, before it becomes more awkward to call up a former friend than a complete stranger?
Actually, with fewer cards being sent, your card...if you choose to send one, and I suggest you do...becomes a more meaningful gesture. You took the time when you didn't have to!
If you do decide to carry on this gracious custom, don't make the ridiculous mistake quite a few executives make. Don't have the envelopes hand addressed and stamped, and then merely put an unsigned, printed card inside. That way the recipient's assistant throws the human touch into the wastebasket. What she hands over is a printed folder that's less personalized than your American Express bill. Word-process the envelopes, and put them through the postage meter. But personalize the card. At least sign your name over the place where it's printed. And if the card goes to someone you've really been remiss in not contacting for a whole year, write a few words of greeting.
Distribute your annual report.
Mail copies of your company's report to any business contacts who might be professionally interested. Attach your card, and add a very brief personal message, such as:
Let your scissors do the talking.
One of America's most prominent and successful businessmen...and also one of the ablest at selling himself and the company he heads... has an extremely gracious habit that sporadically reminds me and his literally hundreds of other friends that we're on his mind and have his good will.
As he does his voracious reading of periodicals on virtually every subject from all over the world, he clips articles that would interest his friends and has his secretary mail each clipping with just a simple typed note, which he signs:
You can do the same thing...as I try to, when I think of it. When you do your regular reading of newspapers and periodicals, keep an eye out for articles of interest. For example, you may know that one of your business contacts collects original Audubon prints, coaches a Little League team, cross-country skis, restores antique furniture, or toured Alaska with her husband on vacation last fall. When you run across an article on the appropriate subject, clip it and send it, along with a similar short note:
Don't worry about whether Linda's already seen the article, or has long since known the information in it. The point is that you remembered her interest and you cared enough to clip the article and send it to her.
Interestingly, you can show personal thoughtfulness with this sort of gesture, when almost anything else would seem blatantly presumptuous. Consider this example: You're three levels down from the CEO on the organization chart, so you wouldn't dream of suggesting a lunch date, even though you occasionally have a few moments of conversation with him while waiting for the 10th floor elevator. It would be a gracious and appreciated gesture, however, for you to send him the article on scrimshaw from your latest Connoisseur magazine. You know he's a collector, because he has a lighted vitrine full of it in his office. And of course, if you also happen to be a collector, he may even signal a willingness to talk more freely on the interest you both happen to share.
Indeed, some lower-echelon adventurer who didn't know the CEO even remotely as well as you do could also have sent the article to a Chairman whose hobby is so openly displayed to the entire company. Many CEOs like to feel that they have rapport with more of their executives than just the six on their Management Committee. No matter what your current echelon, why not be someone the CEO can speak to, when he wants to break an awkward silence in the presence of several employees?
Early in my career, I watched with awe and respect as a newly-recruited MBA from an unpretentious Midwestern university made five years' progress in two, after "discovering" during his first week on the job that he and the CEO of J. Walter Thompson Company "shared" an interest in collecting antique Wedgwood china. As this clever young fellow so aptly put it:
Incidentally, when people are mentioned in the press, they often appreciate having an extra clipping. And regardless of whether they'll send the item along to Mom for her scrapbook, they're pleased to know that someone noticed. I'm occasionally quoted in out-of-town papers and would never even know it, if not for the clippings friends send me.
Respond immediately to any piece of good news you read, or hear on TV or radio, about one of your contacts. If you see in the paper that someone you know has published a book or a journal article, led her company to a record sales year or her partner to victory in the country club doubles tournament, married off her daughter in style, or been invited to dinner at the White House, clip the article. Attach it to a short note of congratulation and put it in the mail. Surprisingly few people comment on such out-of-the-ordinary events, and the ones who do are warmly remembered.
Don't waste any opportunity to be thoughtful.
Be as lavish as possible with every kind of invitation. Put your key business contacts on every guest list for cocktail parties you give at home and at the office. When an organization of which you're a director or trustee has a special event, even if it's just a Sunday afternoon open-house at the local nature center, ask for additional invitations to be sent to business contacts who might be interested.
And never let a pair of tickets for anything, from a hockey game to a fashion show, languish unused on your desk. If you're too busy to attend, send them immediately to someone you think might enjoy the event. He may also be too busy to use the tickets, but you can be sure he'll appreciate your thoughtful gesture.
If you're anywhere near my age, you'll never forget the black-and-white TV image of John F. Kennedy standing hatless and coatless on that cold day in January 1961, saying:
Somehow his exquisite skill with words renewed a logic as old as the Golden Rule.
A lot of people figure they can network their way through life, asking for time, ideas, knowledge, and sponsorship, with no corresponding impulse to do anything in return, except perhaps to say "thank you." Then, without so much as a backward glance, they're off to scavenge from someone else...always with asking and getting clearly in mind. Meanwhile, helping, sharing, and caring are pretty much forgotten and discarded.
That is not the way the most influential and successful people I know operate. They treasure the very special values of friendship. And they warmly appreciate their relationships with kind and helpful people they know less well. Their philosophy would parallel JFK's:
A Parting Word!
Here's where I leave you.
For now at least, I've conveyed everything I can think of that could possibly help you negotiate the inevitable "Passages" of a successful executive career in the realm of $100,000+.
Over the years I've had the pleasure of knowing and observing many of America's leading executives. You and I both owe them a "thank you," because much of what we've covered has come from them. The rest has come from 24 years on the opposite side of the recruiter's desk from the one you face...a perspective it's my pleasure to share with. But now we part company. You go back to being an executive, and I go back to identifying and attracting the most appropriate ones to meet the needs of my clients.
Let's hope that someday I may have reason to call you as one of the four or five best candidates in America for a specific CEO position that I've been engaged to fill. Or that you rise so far above $100,000 that you have executives well over $100,000 reporting to you, and I can help in their selection as a means of further helping you.
Until then, thank you for the time we've spent together. And very best wishes for an outstandingly successful career.
