As a result of the web, most of us are familiar with social networking--the uses of Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace. Yet very few are familiar with the highly profitable links between organizational networking and career success. In fact, my consulting has revealed that nearly everyone believes in networking, yet very, very few have networks, or know how to build an employee network.
Here's the surprise! Extensive research by Ronald Burt and colleagues at the University of Chicago shows that networks make it possible to build career-valuable social capital. Certain kinds of personal networks are strongly associated with more creativity, faster learning to increase your brainware ("deep smarts"), more positive individual and team evaluations (how smart is that in a recession when execs are figuring out who to lay off?), faster promotions, and higher earnings (I'm for that!). Burt distinguishes between "echo networks" and networks across "structural holes"--distant networks.
Echo networks are those networks that you create through your friends. They follow the standard social rule: "birds of a feather flock together." They're composed of your friends, and your friends friends. You can be sure that echo networks think the same way, usually have the same values and insights, know the same skills, and view the workworld through the same lens. Echo networks are composed of intimate friends who reinforce all the same stuff. They're also composed of the people you gossip with in front of the water cooler. . . same stuff, over and over.
In significant contrast, smart networkers understand that a single network of friends (echo network), can't give them the success they want in their career. They get to know people in a number of distant networks (shoulder length networks)--weak connections with employees from different levels of the hierarchy, different divisions inside the company, different jobs, different generations, different ways of thinking, different education (MBAs, research scientists, manufacturing experts, lawyers from in house counsel), etc. Each of those employees is probably a member of a different network, or knows someone in a different network. You won't have the intimacy from your old friends' network, or even the trust and common likes/dislikes, but the values are terrific for your career. Think about what you can get from contacts with a lot of diverse networks:
--positioned for better communication--so you know more about what's going on in your company, the risks you face in a churning economy, what competencies the senior officers really value, how a recession is liable to hit you, what are the possibilities of bankruptcy, merger, acquisition, etc.
--positioned for important resources--so you can find a coaching or training mentor, get help as you become more street smart, learn who knows what so you can make a better contribution to your team and your company, gain help in reframing your job insights for a different job, learn how others think differently about your world so that you can make more well-rounded decisions, and learn how to work with difficult people.
--positioned for better opportunities--so you can find out about new projects, stretch opportunities for your career, effective personal positioning, moving across divisions, and taking advantage of market changes.
--positioned for faster promotions and better pay--'nuff said there.
Jim Classe graduated from a top Eastern university nearly two years ago, and shortly after that hired on at a major West coast financial services company. His first job was working with residential mortages, a job that bored him after six months, and lost its challenge. Using his growing network, after the required year in that division, he found a job working with retirement funding, and has well-supported plans for another division change for his career, after his second year with the firm. Jim developed intimate and distant networks within his division, then was able to build on that to several other divisions and networks. A Millennial (25 years old), he told me it took him six to twelve months to really get his network going--but he's well on the way, has a great reputation, is well-liked, and periodically is able to make valued contributions to his organization that have gotten him recognition throughout the firm. He told me that his friends (same age, same division, same kind of job) were clueless about what he was doing--and thought it a waste of time.
Here's the lesson: start your networking as soon as you're out of college--and never stop. It's a career necessity in the highly networked New Economy. I suspect most of you will need to learn how to build a network, how to develop protocols and scripts to communicate (what I call the language technology) with potential network members and grow your network, so watch my site for a white paper that will show and tell you how to do it.
I'm very curious about generation X and Y. What do you need to know about networking smarts?
