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Letting Go of What Got You Here

Letting Go of What Got You Here

let your network be your antenna for the future

Thomas Kriese
February 22, 2024

Hi there, happy Thursday!

Welcome to another issue of the Network Wrangler. We’re up to lucky number 8! Here’s today’s structure:

MANAGE: Insights on managing your existing network
GROW: Practical tips to grow your network
INSPIRE: A business idea that leverages networks
SCROLL: Quick links to items related to networking

MANAGE: Is It Time for Change? (Yes)

This is actually a trick question (sorry).

Change happens all the time, whether we choose to acknowledge its impact on us or not.

So, the answer is always yes. It’s always time for change.

When I led the Global SU ecosystem team at Singularity University, my favorite observation we shared in all our programs was, “Today’s pace of change is the slowest it’s ever going to be.”

The truism is a wake-up call to executives and entrepreneurs that the rate of development of exponential technologies (AI, robotics, digital medicine, renewable energies, etc) is only going to get faster and more distributed, and therefore, they have to embrace change as part of their strategies.

Whether we’re an executive, an entrepreneur, a student, or a homemaker, the best way to embrace change and adapt to change is to start by having a robust network of adaptable and resilient people around us.

For the moment, we’re going to assume we’ve got that network in place (since we’ve been reading how to manage our networks for eight issues now).

In The CEO Next Door, authors Elena Botelho, Kim Powell, and Tahl Raz suggest that we adapt to change in two ways: learn to “let go of the past” while “building an antenna for the future.”

So, how can we develop our ability to let go of the past?

To start, we must be willing to discard the habits, strategies, and traits that have gotten us to where we are today.

Take inventory and ask ourselves which practices or assumptions may be holding us back. Are there people in our network who are holding us back, intentionally or unintentionally?

We must be willing to experiment with new approaches and ways of being while also acquiring skills we don’t have. And who better to acquire those skills from than people in our network (Seek Someone Two Steps Ahead)?

(You also let go of the old you by creating a new you.)

photo by Albin Biju

And what about building an antenna for the future?

One of the first things we can do is ensure we have reserved time for thinking about the future. This means creating an actual calendar appointment for ourselves, including friends, family, and/or colleagues, as required. During this reserved time, we can consider critical trends, what changes are on the horizon, and how we are positioned against those changes or trends.

In a network context, one of the powerful ways I build an antenna for the future is by speaking to my past and present customers. Understanding their challenges, struggles, frustrations, and what excites them informs the products and solutions I develop.

What’s stopping you from setting a calendar appointment for yourself next week to address how you can better adapt to change? If you don’t have an hour in your schedule, set a half hour. If you don’t have a half hour, figure out how you can wake up a little early to spend the time while the rest of the house is still sleeping.

Darwin was right: “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

GROW: Network for Life

One of my goals for 2024 is to become a better storyteller.

In pursuit of that goal, I’m on my second read through Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling by Matthew Dicks. I highly recommend the book for the frameworks and practical skills it teaches, and the author’s firm conviction that all of us have great stories to tell.

One of the exercises he gives us in the book is what he calls “homework for life.” It’s a quick self-reflection exercise that’s designed to capture the story-worthy moments that happens to all of us, everyday, we just have to find them.

The homework is this: Each day, just before bedtime, think back to the most story-like moment that happened during the day. In a journal, spreadsheet, or notebook, capture that moment with the day’s date and no more than a sentence or two capturing the essence of that moment. You’re not going for detail, you’re aiming to jog your memory.

When you do this homework for life over days, weeks, and months, you begin to see patterns in your life and how your story is part of a bigger story.

There’s a similar exercise we can do to build our networks bigger and stronger by intentionally observing who we want to be in our network and why.

So, I invite you to embark upon a “Network for Life” exercise each night before you go to bed. (I’ve started mine this past week to supplement my homework for life.)

Every day at bedtime, I think back to all of the people I observed or interacted with during the day, and I choose one person I’d like to have in my network and why. Was it the entrepreneur I was introduced to briefly while at coffee with a friend? Was it the gate agent at the airport that I saw handle a surly customer with aplomb? Was it the parent at the theater rehearsal who was writing a book but didn’t know how to self-publish?

In my Network for Life spreadsheet, I capture the following information:

date
name (if I have it, otherwise a reminder of that person, e.g., “gate agent”)
No more than two sentences for why I want that person in my network. (“I want someone like her in my network to help me learn to confidently and politely hold boundaries.”)

The cumulative effect of Network for Life is that I can see patterns emerge of the types of people I want to add to my network, and I can initiate the connections when I’m ready to engage by going back to reach out to folks on the list when I’ve got the time and energy to do so.

I’ll check back in with you next quarter to let you know how my Network for Life is going.

(Oh, and if you have 17 minutes for Matthew Dicks’s TED talk about homework for life, watch it. It’s time well spent. You can start Network for Life tomorrow.)

INSPIRE: Crowdsourced “Got It!” Moments

If you’ve ever been in the audience at a conference keynote, you’ve likely seen it happen: the keynote presentation has a slide that’s so good that everyone takes their camera phone out to snap a picture of it.

In the better keynotes, these picture-worthy slides happen multiple times.

I’ve both produced and been in the audience for dozens (hundreds?) of such presentations. And I call these phone captures the “Got it!” moments of the event, for two reasons:

The smile on the picture-taker’s face when they see the photo is in focus and legible for later recall and
The speaker knows that the audience clicked (see what I did there?) with what they’re talking about.

As an event producer, I often wrote down these “Got It!” moments to share with the speakers afterward during our after-action reviews so they’d know what did and didn’t work. I also kept track to know who I should bring back for future events.

The challenge with this method was that I could only capture the “Got It!” moments for speakers I actually observed while I observed them. As the producer, I had many other duties that kept me from watching the show: business development meetings, trouble-shooting catering hiccups (they always happen), jet lag-busting naps, etc.

So, this week’s network-based business idea is one I’ve been thinking about for a while, and it’s a hardware and software solution that leverages the wisdom of the crowd:

At the back of the room, where the AV technical staff sit, set up a sensor that tracks and records the “Got It!” moments for every speaker. The sensor observes the audience and sees the upraised arms and camera screens and captures the relevant info for that moment, including the speaker name, the slide, and (optionally) a 60-second soundbite of what the speaker was saying.

For attendees at the event, they can subscribe to the “Got It!” feed and know that each and every “Got It!” moment will be available to them after the speaker is done. The attendee can stay in listening/learning mode instead of transcribing mode, and know they’ll have a high-fidelity artifact about the speaker’s topic to share with others.

For speakers at the event, they’ll have powerful feedback to know how they connected with their audience and what content to develop better for the future.

For organizers of the event, they’ll have a powerful tool to use in providing feedback to their talent and making decisions on future bookings.

Does anyone want to go in on developing this with me? Just hit reply, and we’ll be off to the races!

SCROLL: This Week’s Quick Hits

Better representation in medicine: The National Institutes of Health pursues better precision medicine through creating “All of Us” program six years ago to diversify genomic data. Over half of new samples have come from non-European descent, resulting in discovery of over 275 million new RNA strands. (STAT)
Crowdsourcing your food choices: Top 100 Pizza Spots in the US, according to Yelp Elite users. (Yelp)

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

— Thomas

PS: Heads-up, March 4 is my next available date for coaching. We might be a good fit if you know you need to reconnect with your network and want to make 2024 the year you harness the power of your connections.