Developing a world-class professional contact network

In the first part of this article, about Career and leadership building similar to startup development, I discussed career development plans, leadership development, startup strategies and organization building, based on the book, The Startup of You: Adapt, Take Risks, Grow Your Network, and Transform Your Career by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha. Now, let’s take a look at building networks to help you develop those concepts.

Building unexpected communities

According to Hoffman, you can break down your contacts into three types of people:, high-trust allies, friendlies, and social media followers. These three could generate unexpected communities and career opportunities that show up without warning.

Let’s look at each of these three relationship types.

1. High-trust professional allies: These are people you successfully work with, or you have or had a common project with. You want to expand on that success. To do this, you want to make sure your allies receive benefits, not just you. 

Sometimes, they are just career sounding boards to kick ideas around, advisors with specialty expertise or advocates that have a reputation which could be valuable to guide your advancement. 

It is good to have about eight to ten of these types of contacts that you regularly touch base with for advice, as you can confide in them and trust their judgment. They are good people to collaborate with on a wide range of opportunities, as they are attuned to your interests, as you are to theirs. Both of you have similar visions and are willing to cooperate with each other, which is important in leadership positions as well.

2. Friendlies: These are weak ties or acquaintances that you are occasionally in contact with but live in different worlds. You could meet them once a year at trade shows or only on-line, for example.

They are outside your close inner circle but can bring you insight and contacts that can be extremely valuable. Therefore, they could be very helpful when developing your alternate adjustment plans (Plan B that I mentioned in the first part of this article), or worst case scenario plans (Plan Z from that article). 

The broader this “friendly” network is, the higher the chance of opportunities being directed to you. You might have a hundred to a thousand of these contacts, depending on how sociable you are. If you ask these people for introductions, you might be able to reach millions of people. To request introductions right, you must make sure the person knows the value of the introduction to them too and the person you are to be introduced to. That way value can be generated for all concerned. Sometimes it’s best to not ask for anything, but inform them how you can help them. The value to you could come indirectly at a later date. Try doing this at least once a month.

3. Social media followers: These are the people that follow you on-line, which could include the other two contacts types above. They can generate passive income for you, income that can be earned while you sleep. Think of the people that follow you as a non-financial version of passive income, or passive career capital. When you publish something on social media, you get attention, which exposes a lot of people to your on-line career image and abilities without you having to put in much effort to interact with them. Many professions benefit from building an on-line image, like consultants, coaches, business executives, academics, and innovators. This could lead to speaking engagements, job opportunities, book deals, and most gratifying of all, the chance to share hard-won wisdom and experiences with lots of people. All may benefit, and you gain recognition in your field.

According to Hoffman, good entrepreneurs are always building their networks by recruiting people with diversified skills, experiences, knowledge and acquaintances. This multiplies opportunities to apply their skills, information and community. If they forward your information, postings and activities, your image grows without any effort on your part.

Relationships matter

Hoffman believes that relationships shape who we are and who we become. Behavior and beliefs are contagious and spread with human interaction. With people we contact, we pick up emotions and excitement, imitate their actions and absorb their values and insights. If our friends get things done, so will we. Furthermore, through these relationships, leadership is born.

Our cities, companies, organizations, families and society at large, are collections of different people who shape us. Therefore, considering how we want to be shaped, we should be very selective in choosing who we build relationships with. Research has shown that a business team will tend to perform at the level of the worst team member. Our success will depend on not only our capacities but the capacities of our networks and the communities around us. Having said that, productive networking is building reciprocal relationships where all benefit.

Sharing experiences is everything, as the more you and your network benefit. The higher the quality of your network, the more you will grow. If you hang around with people that want to get things done, you will more than likely achieve more than if you are in a group that just likes to complain, attack others and avoid the hard work of seeking solutions. Therefore, the individual skills, experiences and knowledge of your network are important, as it can multiply your achievements.

According to Hoffman, in order to successfully network and build a quality community, you have to do two things: First, you must look at issues from the other person’s perspective and understand their needs. Second, with that understanding, you should explore how you can help them and how they can help you. By helping them, directly and indirectly, you will benefit as well. You have to ask, what is in it for both of us? If done well, this process should be energizing for both and fun.

Try to avoid initially asking what others can do for you and your community, but consider your potential value to them. The value to you could come later, long after you’ve proven your value to them. After that, you could consider asking for something that is of little sacrifice to them but very beneficial to you. That way, jointly, the two of you advance through learned shared interests.

Serendipity, curiosity and frustration

With curiosity and situational frustration, extreme alertness to opportunities can develop. You can develop this curiosity by hanging around people that are also curious and frustrated with similar issues as you. That is why I write articles like this one—to attract people that want to improve things.

You don’t learn curiosity, but it can infect you, depending on the people you interact with. They lead you, and you lead them toward solving issues. They aren’t just complaining, but exploring why things are the way they are and how improvements can be made. In this environment, rewards can come unexpectedly, suddenly but sometimes well in the future. Opportunities will grow over time through ideas, curiosities, and experiments that teach you things about your field. From this, serendipity materializes. The more you explore, the better you get at exploring ideas, as to where ideas are, how ideas develop and why they appear.

This is how “serendipity,” those accidental good fortunes, come to the surface. They could even come out of unexpected setbacks. Hoffman writes, “Serendipity isn’t like winning the lottery. Serendipity involves being alert to potential opportunities and acting on them. You have to cultivate them.” I call these “weak signal opportunities” which I have spotted over my career. It comes from a wide range of concept exploration with other people and in different places. It is not waiting for things to just happen. With these activities, you can increase the quality and quantity of opportunities. 

Exploring like this takes work, and you should reward yourself for having an active day of contacting people and asking thought provoking questions, even if you can’t see immediate results. That should be a form of success and is something you can control and should celebrate.

Don't expect direct, immediate returns. Opportunities will grow over time with exponential growth and plateaus along a continual life-time of experiences, often stumbling upon the person or idea that exposes the opportunity. Simply seeking out more information than your peers can create those opportunities.

Notice the below. This is the reality of our opportunities' timeline on the bottom, which is unpredictable. Slow and steady progress doesn’t exist in the startup world. There are starts and stops, setbacks and then exponential growth.

Strategic serendipity

Practicing what Hoffman calls a two step “strategic serendipity” in your career (or startup) increases your chance of producing moments of explosive opportunity. 

1. Increase your curiosity of what is going on. Then, collaborate and share far more than others do.

2. Hustle and expose yourself to random, unexpected experiences. People with good ideas and information tend to hang out with each other and kick concepts around. Seek out those people and create communities both in person and online through websites like Nextdoor or Meetup.com. You could even turn to alumni or any past employment groups. Think about the company you want to work for. Don’t just talk to their HR people and tell them what you’d like to do. Best is to directly ask current employees in your desired position what they’re up to, and see where your skills might be helpful. From there, opportunities might come out. 

Hoffman notes that high-quality people tend to form a common bond. They have an ethos of sharing and cooperating, and people with certain expertise tend to attract each other in a single region or industry. They form informal gatherings that are focused on specific issues. You have to find that region and industry that interests you.

Risk

Uncertainty (which is uncomfortable) and risk are not the same thing. Just because there is uncertainty doesn’t mean it is risky. Just think of what others believe as dangerous while you think it is an opportunity. Your situation and/or resilience are different from others. Also, the other person might be too adverse to risk. Often people overestimate the threats, underestimate the opportunities and don’t fully realize the resources one might be able to apply to overcome the risk. Simply, potential risks get your attention faster than opportunities do. You (and your team as a leader) must work on overcoming these negative biases.

Further, short-term risks can lead to long-term learning, opportunities and stability. To reduce the chance of being too risk-averse, ask yourself and your team this question: “Could you tolerate the outcome if the worst-case scenario happened? (Yes or No) Would it be career ending or just force you to adjust? Would it be just embarrassing or crippling? Can you develop a plan for the worst possible outcome? If you can, it might be worth taking the risk when pursuing a major opportunity. 

Having said all that, to make a quality, intelligent risk evaluation, as I mentioned in the Part 1 of this article, you must establish both a Plan B (a slight deviation from your main plan, Plan A) and a Plan Z (the strategy you take when all else fails). You want to contain the downside of your plan and maximize adapting and learning.

Create a Plan Z with risks in mind

Research psychologist Gary A. Klein developed a method called “Premortem” to explore potential reasons a startup could fail. Here are the steps of this method:

1. The leader invites key decision-makers to attend a risk exploration meeting.
2. He asks the members to think one year into the future and imagine the project as a complete failure.
3. With that complete failure in mind, each member, without discussion with other members, takes five to ten minutes to write down on a piece of paper the most probable reason the project failed.
4. The leader collects all the pieces of paper.
5. Without giving names, the leader reads each failure reason. What he is trying to discover are factors or events that can happen which destroys the startup, but no one thought about it or planned for it at the time of project approval. 
6. Considering those reasons, a Plan Z can be developed with the considered potential of each risk happening in one year.

Through this exercise, the team increases the knowledge of what could happen. Without this exercise, the team has no idea what potentially could happen, and they can not prepare for it.

Plan for shocks

Under emotional stress, you don’t rise to the occasion and perform at your best. On top of that, you only rise to your highest level that you trained for beforehand and practiced handling. Whether you are just an individual or the leader of a team, you must prepare for and practice handling worst-case scenarios. All jobs or start projects have volatility features. When implementing opportunity-creating strategies, consider worst-case scenarios. To consider them, you could join or create discussion groups, take on side projects, etc. Network, interact and collaborate on potentially needed iterations.

Whether in the economy, business industries, international relations, crime, or the job market, people have to adjust to “Black Swans,” unpredictable or unforeseen events that have extreme consequences. In any situation, small countermeasure plans to avoid overdependence, vulnerability or risks will keep you more open to the appearance of opportunities.

Specialty experts, your experts, general intellectuals

Looking at your network and team members, what expertise do the people in it possess? Hoffman presents three types, specialty experts, your experts and general intellectuals.

1. Specialty experts: These people have specialty expertise in your areas of interest? These people are directly involved and have knowledge in what you’re interested in. They are frontline people with direct experience in that field. Learning from them can be extremely valuable to you, even though what they say could be very obvious to them.

2. Your experts: These are people that know you well. They know your professional strengths, weaknesses, desires and what you absolutely dread. Sometimes, they know things about you that you are not particularly aware of. Their guidance can be very helpful, if you ask them what they think your strengths are. Also, if you are a team leader, ask what all the members desire and what they hate. This will help you guide the team.

3. General intellectuals: These are people that have wide intelligence and have a wealth of knowledge and experience. Talking to these people could guide you in directions you had never considered.

Noticing these three types of people, how strong is your network? Your network can be your greatest source of information and guidance. The co-workers, business colleagues, allies, friendlies, followers and distant connections can be like sensors that alert you and focus your attention.