When you get divorced from a place where you've worked for five years, you realize you have to crank up old customers. It takes a real emotional toll.
Paul Up ham found that after his first assignment as an interim executive, he too, had to crank up his network all over again.
I focused all of my energies on the assignment, which was the right thing to do, but when I came back, I found my network in the East had dried up. It took thirty to sixty days of calling people to restart my network. The response I got from them was, "We thought you were fat, dumb, and happy out in Chicago and we took you off our radar screen."
If you're out of sight, you're out of mind. Therefore, the frequency of contact is almost as critical to successful networking as the quality of those contacts.
Seeking Specific Results
While certainly approaches a network seeking results, this does not mean that every interaction must or should lead to specific results. Results come from relationships good relationships and thus relationship building naturally accounts for much of the non results oriented time one spends with other network members. As we will see later in this chapter, while will indeed use his or her network to generate business, there is a subtle but clear difference in how this comes about in the context of a peer peer network exchange. Over time, actual benefits evolve naturally from a well developed network system where individuals truly get to know each other's core skills and attributes.
It is extremely important for to continually broaden his or her network in order to get a more global view of what's happening both in the economy and in the community at large. Broadening your network increases your exposure to opportunity, which means extending your networks beyond business. When a portable executive engages in volunteer work, for example, the contacts he or she makes can serve as a basis for recommendations, particularly when the nature of the volunteer work involved exposes peers to talents or core skills not ordinarily tapped in one's business life. When Hans Solmssen made a career switch from the Lincoln Savings Bank in New York City to Magnetic Resonance Corporation, he had already served on the board of a private school with two of the company's investors. Says Solmssen.
Two of the investors at Magnetic Resonance Corporation knew me well. I had been the chairman of the board of trustees of a small private school and they had sat on the board with me, so they knew how I reacted in tight, difficult situations and they knew I was unusually persistent and tenacious. They also knew me from our years together at the National Bank of Canada and saw me create a sizable, profitable bank from scratch.
Just How Informal Is Informal?
While networking is conducted on an informal basis, it is nevertheless a process that requires hard work and constant reassessment. Networking involves maintaining a delicate balance between meeting with people of different interests and core capabilities and ensuring that you're not wasting your time on activities that do not advance your purpose for being part of the network. Portable executive Ann Rarich recalls a time when "I was picking the wrong professional groups. They were comprised of people who weren't very genuine or sincere, and once I started to pick up on that, I found the group very unsatisfying. I needed to find the right network where I could really help and be helped."
Assessing the Value of the Network
To assess the true value of any given network, must first commit to it long enough to be in a position to judge its function in helping her career. She must also work hard at her relationship within the network in order to reap whatever benefits the network can yield.
Portable executives are dependent upon network relationships for the success of their businesses. Not only are networks critical to the success of one's career, but the network is a portable executive's immediate business community and with it comes all of the attendant risks and rewards. There are two critical differences, however, between corporate culture and the network: AH members of a network are viewed as valued peers. And the network constitutes an entirely flexible business community that can be adjusted according to need.
