Many people are turned off by the topic of networking. They think
it's slimy, inauthentic. Picture the consummate networker: a high-energy
fast talker who collects as many business cards as he can and attends
mixers sporting slicked-back hair. Or the overambitious college kid who
frantically e-mails alumni, schmoozes with the board of trustees, and
adds anyone he's ever met as an online friend. Such people are drunk on
networking Kool-Aid -- and are looking at a potentially nasty hangover.
Luckily, building your network doesn't have to be like that.
Old-school networkers are transactional. They pursue relationships
thinking solely about what other people can do for them. Relationship
builders, on the other hand, try to help others first. They don't keep
score. And they prioritize high-quality relationships over a large
number of connections.
Building a genuine relationship with another person depends on at
least two abilities. The first is seeing the world from another person's
perspective. No one knows that better than the skilled entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurs succeed when they make stuff people will pay money for --
and that means understanding what's going on in the heads of customers.
Likewise, in relationships it's only when you put yourself in the other
person's shoes that you begin to develop an honest connection.
The second ability is being able to think about how you can
collaborate with and help the other person rather than thinking about
what you can get. We're not suggesting that you be so saintly that a
self-interested thought never crosses your mind. What we're saying is
that your first move should always be to help. A study on negotiation
found that a key difference between skilled and average negotiators was
the time spent searching for shared interests and asking questions of
the other person.
Follow that model. Start with a friendly gesture and genuinely mean
it. Dale Carnegie's classic book on relationships, despite all its
wisdom, has the unfortunate title How to Win Friends and Influence People.
This makes Carnegie widely misunderstood. You don't "win" a friend. A
friend is not an asset you own; a friend is an ally, a collaborator.
When you can tell that someone is attempting sincerity, it leaves you
cold. It is like the feeling you have when someone calls you by your
first name repeatedly in conversation. Novelist Jonathan Franzen gets it
right when he says inauthentic people are obsessed with authenticity.
Strengthen your alliances
The best way to engage with new people is not by cold calling or by
"networking" with strangers at cocktail parties, but by working with the
people you already know. Of the many types of professional
relationships, among the most important are your close allies. Most
professionals maintain five to 10 active alliances. What makes a
relationship an alliance? First, an ally is someone you consult
regularly for advice. Second, you proactively share and collaborate on
opportunities together. You keep your antennae attuned to an ally's
interests, and when it makes sense to pursue something jointly, you do.
Third, you talk up an ally. You promote his or her brand. Finally, when
an ally runs into conflict, you defend him and stand up for his
reputation, and he does the same for you.
I [Reid] first met Mark Pincus while
at PayPal in 2002. I was giving him advice on a startup he was working
on. From our first conversation, I felt inspired by Mark's wild
creativity and how he seems to bounce off the walls with energy. I'm
more restrained, preferring to fit ideas into strategic frameworks
instead of unleashing them fire-hose-style. But it's our similar
interests and vision that have made our collaborations so successful.
We invested in Friendster together in 2002. In 2003 the two of us
bought the Six Degrees patent, which covers some of the foundational
technology of social networking. Mark then started his own social
network, Tribe; I started LinkedIn (LNKD). When Peter Thiel and I were set to put the first money into Facebook in 2004,
I suggested that Mark take half of my investment allocation. I wanted
to involve Mark in any opportunity that seemed intriguing, especially
one that played to his social networking background. In 2007, Mark
called me to talk about his idea for Zynga (ZNGA),
the social gaming company he co-founded and now leads. I knew almost
immediately that I wanted to invest and join the board, which I did. An
alliance is always an exchange, but not a transactional one. A
transactional relationship is when your accountant files your tax
returns and you pay him for his time.
An alliance is when a co-worker needs last-minute help on Sunday
night preparing for a Monday morning presentation, and even though
you're busy, you agree to go over to his house and help. You cooperate
and sacrifice because you want to help a friend in need but also because
you figure you'll be able to call on him in the future when you are the
one in a bind. That isn't being selfish; it's being human.
The diversity of weak ties
Allies, by the nature of the bond, are few in number. By contrast,
there are potentially hundreds or thousands of looser connections that
also play a role in your professional life. These are the folks you meet
at conferences, old classmates, co-workers, or just interesting people.
Sociologists refer to these contacts as "weak ties": people with whom
you have spent low amounts of low-intensity time but with whom you're
still friendly.
Weak ties in a career context were formally researched in 1973, when
sociologist Mark Granovetter asked a random sample of professionals how
they had found their new job. It turns out that 82% of them found their
position through a contact they saw only occasionally or rarely. In
other words, the contacts who referred jobs were "weak ties."
Granovetter accounts for this result by explaining that your good
friends tend to be from the same industry, neighborhood, religious
group, etc. Consequently, their information is similar to yours -- a job
a good friend knows about, you probably already know about too.
Weak ties, however, usually sit outside the inner circle. Thus,
there's a greater likelihood that a weak tie will be exposed to new
information or a new job opportunity you'd otherwise miss. To be sure,
weak ties are uniquely helpful so long as they hail from a different
social circle or industry niche and therefore bring new information and
opportunities. A weak-tie acquaintance whose job and background is
identical to yours is unlikely to offer unique network intelligence. So
when connecting with acquaintances, prioritize diversity in order to
broaden the overall reach of your network.
Just as a digital camera cannot store an infinite number of photos
and videos, you cannot maintain an infinite number of allies or
acquaintances. The maximum number of relationships we can realistically
manage -- the number that can fit on the memory card, as it were -- is
described as Dunbar's Number, after the evolutionary psychologist Robin
Dunbar. In the early 1990s, Dunbar studied the social connections within
groups of monkeys and apes. He theorized that the maximum size of their
overall social group was limited by the small size of their neocortex.
Based on our neocortex size, Dunbar calculated that humans should be
able to maintain relationships with roughly 150 people at a time. He
also found that many businesses and military groups organize their
people into cliques of about 150. Hence, Dunbar's Number of 150.
There is indeed a limit to the number of relationships you can
maintain, but a crucial qualifier is that there is not one blunt limit
of 150; in fact, there are different limits for different types of
relationships. Think back to the digital camera. Either you can take
low-resolution photographs and store 100 of them in total, or you can
take high-resolution photographs and store 40. In relationships, you may
have only a few close buddies you see every day, yet you can stay in
touch with many distant friends if you e-mail them only once or twice a
year. But there's a twist: You can actually maintain a much broader
social network than the people you currently "know."
Three degrees of separation
Your allies, weak ties, and the other people you know right now are
your first-degree connections. But your friends know people you don't
know. These friends of friends are your second-degree connections. And
those friends of friends have friends -- those are your third-degree
connections.
Stanley Milgram's and Duncan Watts's "small world" research shows the
planet Earth as one massive social network; every human being is
connected to every other via no more than about six intermediaries.
Academically the theory is correct, but when it comes to meeting people
who can help you professionally, three degrees of separation
is what matters. Three degrees is the magic number because when you're
introduced to a second- or third-degree connection, at least one person
personally knows the origin or target person. That's how trust is
preserved.
Suppose you have 40 connections, and assume that each friend has 35
other friends in turn, and each of those friends of friends has 45
unique friends of his own. If you do the math (40 × 35 × 45), that's
63,000 people you can reach via an introduction. People's extended
networks are frequently larger than they realize, which is why an early
tagline at LinkedIn was "Your network is bigger than you think." So how
do you actually reach those connections? Via an introduction from
someone you know, who knows the person you want to reach.
I receive about 50 entrepreneur pitches by e-mail every day. I have
never funded a company directly from a cold solicitation, and my guess
is that I never will. When an entrepreneur comes referred by
introduction, it's as if he has a passport at a national border -- he
can walk right through, because someone I trust has already vetted that
entrepreneur. Anytime you want to meet a new person in your extended
network, you should ask for an introduction. You need to ask, directly
and specifically, and you do need to present a compelling reason for why
your connection should do it: "I'd love to meet Rebecca because she
works in the technology industry." Not good enough. "I'm interested in
talking to Rebecca because my company is looking to partner with
companies just like hers." Better, as it appears to benefit both
parties.
OkCupid, a free online dating site, analyzed more than 500,000 first
messages between a man or a woman and a potential suitor. They found
that those with the highest response rates included phrases like "You
mention …" or "I noticed that …" In other words, phrases that showed
that the person had carefully read the other's profile. People do this
in online dating, but when it comes to professional correspondence, it
doesn't happen. People send out appallingly unresearched and generic
requests. If you spend 30 minutes researching a person's professional
profile, your request will stand out. For example, "I noticed you spent a
summer working at a German architecture firm. I once worked for an ad
agency in Berlin and am thinking about returning -- perhaps we could
swap notes about business opportunities?"
You can conceptualize and map your network all you want, but if you
can't effectively request and broker introductions, it adds up to a lot
of nothing. Take it seriously. If you are not receiving or making at
least one introduction a month, you are probably not fully engaging your
extended professional network.
The best network: Wide and (selectively) deep
Several years ago sociologist Brian Uzzi did a study of why certain
Broadway musicals made between 1945 and 1989 were successful and others
flopped. The explanation he arrived at had to do with the people behind
the productions. For failed productions, one of two extremes was common.
The first was a collaboration between creative artists and producers
who tended to all know one another. When there were mostly strong ties,
the production lacked the fresh, creative insights that come from
diverse experience. The other type of failed production was one in which
none of the artists had experience working together. When the group was
made up of mostly weak ties, teamwork and group cohesion suffered.
In contrast, the social networks of the people behind successful
productions had a healthy balance: There were some strong ties, some
weak ties. There was some established trust, but also enough new blood
in the system to generate new ideas. Think of your network of
relationships in the same way: The best professional network is both
narrow/deep (allies with whom you collaborate regularly) and wide/
shallow (weak-tie acquaintances who offer fresh information and ideas).
Giving helpful help
The best way to strengthen a relationship is to do something for another person. But how? Here's a good example. When Jack Dorsey was co-founding Square -- the mobile-payments company -- he had loads of investor interest. Digg and Milk founder Kevin Rose had
seen a prototype of the Square device and immediately realized the
potential. When he asked Jack whether there was room for another person
to join the initial funding round, Jack told him it was full. But Kevin
still wanted to be helpful. He noticed that Square didn't have a demo on
its website showing how the device worked. So he put together a
high-definition video and then showed it to Jack. Impressed, Jack turned
around and invited Kevin to invest in the Series A round of financing.
To be truly helpful, as Kevin was, you need to have a sense of your
friend's values and priorities. What keeps him up at 2 a.m.? What are
his talents? His challenges? Once you understand his needs, think about
offering him a small gift. A small gift is something that's easy for you
to give, unique to the relationship, and unusually helpful for the
other person. Classic small gifts include relevant information,
introductions, and advice. A really expensive big gift is actually
counterproductive -- it can feel like a bribe. When deciding what to
give, reflect on your unique experiences and capabilities. What might
you have that the other person does not?
My passion for entrepreneurship and my interest in board game design
led me to introduce many of my entrepreneur friends to the German board
game The Settlers of Catan.
Set up an "interesting people" fund
Relationships are living, breathing things. Feed, nurture, and care
about them; they grow. Neglect them; they die. You might be nodding your
head at the importance of staying in touch. But behavioral change isn't
easy. That's why Steve Garrity budgeted and precommitted real time and
money to it.
Garrity studied computer science at Stanford and interned at startups
over the summers. After graduating from a master's program in 2005, he
was convinced that he wanted to start a tech company of his own in
Silicon Valley. But he had spent his entire adult life in the Bay Area
and was worried that he would be tied down to one location for many more
years. So he took a job as an engineer at Microsoft (MSFT) to work on its mobile-search technology.
Garrity had one big worry: What would happen to his network of
Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and friends? He knew
he would someday move back to start a company. He did not want his local
network to become stale. So he set aside time and money in advance to
keep his network up-to-date.
The state of Washington doesn't tax personal (or corporate) income,
so Garrity figured he was saving a meaningful amount of money by living
there. Upon moving to Seattle, he declared that $7,000 of his savings
would be "California money." Anytime someone interesting in the Valley
invited him to lunch, dinner, or coffee, Garrity would fly to San
Francisco to do the meeting. One of his old Stanford professors called
him, not realizing he had left town, and invited him over to meet some
interesting students. The following evening, he arrived at the
professor's house, suitcase in hand. Because he had allocated money, he
didn't have to worry about the cost of flights or the stress of
decision-making.
Over his 31/2 years at Microsoft, Garrity visited the Bay Area at
least once a month. After returning to California in 2009, he started a
company, Hearsay Labs,
with a friend whose couch had served as his bed during his regular
pilgrimages to the Bay Area from Seattle. It shows the power of what we
call Iwe: Your capabilities and potential get magnified exponentially by
an active, up-to-date network.
Reid's rules
In the next day: Look at your calendar for the past
six months and identify the five people you spend the most time with --
are you happy with their influence on you?
In the next week: Introduce two people who do not
know each other but ought to. Then think about a challenge you face and
ask for an introduction to a connection in your network who could help.
Imagine you got laid off from your job today. Who are the 10 people
you'd e-mail for advice? Don't wait -- invest in those relationships
now.
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/01/24/reid-hoffman-linkedin-startup-you/
