I didn’t come here to make friends - Networking

 

Few years after, I wondered what had happened to the rude consultant, I was trying to remember the name, the last name…but the bell didn’t ring.

Days ago, I’ve received a LinkedIn request, I’ve checked the picture, and OMG was the rude consultant. Grace to this tool, I was available to check his photo (hi seems older that he is), his career progression (nothing special). During few minutes I was thinking in answer his request with something like I’m not on LinkedIn to be your friend or sorry who are you?

Instead of my emotional response, I accepted his request and I’ve thought about how the networking has developed in less than years, the objectives of networking, how to consolidate my professional network.

When I was at university for me, networking was two or more connected computers that share resources such as files, printers or CD-Roms and are capable of electronic communications. The networks are cables, telephone lines, radio waves, satellite, etc.

Nowadays when we listen to the word networking our mind think about business cards, LinkedIn, job opportunities. It’s amazing how we completely changed the sense of the word.

Maybe you can remember those company dinners, village festivals or your neighbor’s birthday where people were distributing business cards as if it was an Olympic game. I had a mate that told me “Today I bring with me fifty business cards, and at the end of the party I only have 5, I’m an expert in networking” This kind of comments always make me think about how we manage the tools that we have, or how sometimes we misunderstand the new uses of old words.

With the evolution of social networks, how we keep our professional and personal contacts changed at the same pace, there are companies that help us to increase or presence on the web, if you spend some dollars you can get mobile applications that combine all your social networks, apps that allow you to share in a cloud your business information and profile.

There are books, articles, videos that explain what the goals of networking, how to properly networking, best practices, how to improve our efficiency and performance.

Since I am no expert on the subject, having read about networking, I prefer to keep to in mind only one quote from Woody Allen.

"Eighty percent of success is showing up." - Woody Allen

Where from my point of view success is something subjective, that depend on each of us, maybe your professional success will be a CIO of a big company and mine maybe becomes a speaker in a PMI Global congress?

In the XXI century, where every day will launch new applications, new social networks, new careers, "showing up" isn’t limited to hand a card to a birthday party or PMI chapter event, neither purchase a premium account on LinkedIn or write a blog about a rude consultant who worked with you.

We must keep up, retrain, and be aware of all these new technologies that we can use to increase our chances of networking.

As project managers, we have to increase and maintain our network of contacts, not only use it for business opportunities or new professional challenges, but also to acquire new knowledge, develop ourselves and our team, and above all, prevent any of our team members come to us and said something like  "I did not come here to make friends"