Keep Your Connections Warm

Hi there, happy Thursday!

Welcome to another issue of the Network Wrangler. We’re up to number six! Here’s today’s structure:

1. MANAGE: Thoughts on managing your existing network

2. GROW: Insights on growing your network

3. INSPIRE: A business idea that leverages networks

4. SCROLL: Quick links to items related to networking

MANAGE: A Lesson in Keeping Connections Warm

“Vance said he knew Larry. But when I reached out to Larry, he barely remembered Vance at all. That’s not the kind of introduction I expected. I don’t think Vance has that many connections at all, nowhere near as many as he says he does.”

As I overheard this side of the phone conversation, I winced.

This week, I had the opportunity to spend time with a senior partner at a Big 3 management consulting firm. I shadowed him briefly before we sat down for an informational interview. He agreed I could talk about my observations in the newsletter so long as I revealed no personally identifying information.

I’d arrived for our session early, and he invited me to sit on the couch in his office and listen as he went through a series of back-to-back-to-back calls with various members of his team and his peers. Over the course of 30 minutes, he was NOT on the phone for maybe three minutes. As soon as he’d hang up with one person, he was dialing the next. Sometimes, he’d hang up on one person to take an incoming call from another and refer back to the conversation he was just having.

In those thirty minutes, across a half dozen calls, I heard him orchestrate a recent senior hire’s gaining traction in the organization, prepare a team for an incoming senior hire, provide context to team members frustrated with the (in)actions of a soon-to-depart partner (the “Vance” mentioned above, not his real name), and debrief his assistant on all the conversations he’d had and how to track next steps and follow-ups. It’s no wonder he’s a senior partner.

In his conversations, the common theme was how he valued the network strength of his fellow employees. It wasn’t who they knew but how well they knew them. Could the team member make a warm introduction? Or was there work to remind the connection of how they connected initially? Warm is good. Cool is next to worthless.

The judgment was pretty harsh for Vance: He no longer had the strength-of-network to justify his place on the payroll. While Vance was waiting for the new senior hire to arrive to hand over his clients, the firm was already anxious to move on. And the partner I was observing was already beginning to route around Vance to initiate the partner relations handover process starting today.

My key takeaways from the senior partner for networking success in a large organization are these:

1. Keep your connections warm. Create a plan to check in on your close friends (the ~50 people you’d invite to a backyard bbq) and casual contacts (the ~150 people you’d gladly have a drink with) so that they know what you’re doing and you know what they’re up to. You’ll know your plan is successful when they respond “of course!” when asked if they know you.

2. Prepare for your network to be farmed. Time and again, I heard the senior partner refer to a person and how easy or difficult it was to “farm their network” for new business, novel synergies, and new connections. It’s not just the individual's skills but the opportunities of their network that create value in management’s eyes.

3. The network will route around you if you stop creating value. I’m not sure Vance has yet realized it (maybe he does and no longer cares?), but the organization is already routing around his slow-playing the account transfers. We’re in such a highly connected world that resistance will be routed around rather than tolerated. Vance doesn’t stand a chance at controlling the flow.

It’s a good reminder that as you advance in your organization, so much of your job performance is based on your network’s net worth. The strength of your network is likely being monitored and judged just as much as your actual achievements at work. It makes good sense to manage your network well and keep your connections warm.

So, while LinkedIn may keep a handy list of all the people you’ve ever had the opportunity to connect with over the last 20(ish) years since LinkedIn burst on the scene, how many of these connections would you consider warm? This weekend might be a good time to create a plan to check in on your Dunbar’s number of casual contacts.

GROW: And who else should I talk to?

This week’s growth tip is relatively simple and straightforward.

In every conversation you have, end it by asking, “and who else do you recommend I talk to?”

The answer will afford you the opportunity to add one more node to your network, outside the circle of people you already know.

In their answer, there’s an implied endorsement from this recommendation, so the potential connection is good. Much better than if you looked for the person on your own.

Want to turbo-charge the effect of asking the recommendation? Follow up with the recommender to let them know how the new connection turned out, good or bad or indifferent. The feedback is invaluable to the recommender. (Have you ever found yourself thinking, “I wonder if they ever connected?”) And if the feedback isn’t good, chances are strong the recommender will try to make good by giving you another name.

After reading this, who would you recommend I talk to next?

INSPIRE: BeKindlyGPT

This week’s network-based business idea is courteous of my conversation with a professor at the UC San Diego Medical School (Go Tritons!). Our conversation touched on Chat GPT and how it was being incorporated into the curriculum and preparing med students for being AI-augmented docs.

We hit on the idea of creating a “Be Kindly” LLM to convert terse, time-bound instructions from professors and the like, into kind messages of support for the receiver.

While the intentions are good when giving feedback to students, the professors and advisors and educators are overwhelmed with jobs to be done and don’t have time to soften the message.

The BeKindlyGPT would be tied to a Large Language Model that was derived from inputs of kind, nurturing, empathetic and encouraging language sources.

Think Mary Poppins meets Gordon Ramsey. The critical message is delivered with a spoon full of sugar.

So, an input of “You’re failing” would result in “You made it past 54,000 other applicants to become a student here. We believe in you, but your coursework doesn’t match your potential. We want to keep you here, but we need to see improvements. How can we help?”

Who’s going to help me build this?

SCROLL: This Week’s Quick Hits

• If you want to make more friends as you grow older, say goodbye to these 10 habits (HackSpirit)

• This is how many hours it takes to form a close friendship. TLDR; About 50 to go from acquaintance to casual friend, 90 hours to convert that to regular “friends,” and 200 hours to become besties (Sage Journals)

• 8 Morning Routine Habits of Extraordinarily Successful People. The best 15 minutes of your day! (Your Tango)

That’s all for this week. See you next Thursday!

— Thomas

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