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Why Networking Events Are Useless

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I don’t mean to be so blunt, but it’s true! Keith Ferrazzi nails this once again in Never Eat Alone. His words are especially significant given that he is one of the most connected people in the world:

I have a confession to make. I’ve never been to a so-called “networking event” in my life.

If properly organized, these get-togethers in theory could work. Most, however, are for the desperate and uninformed. The average attendees are often unemployed and too quick to pass on their resumes to anyone with a free hand — usually the hand of someone else who is unemployed looking to pass on his resume.

Imagine a congregation of people with nothing in common except joblessness. That’s not exactly a recipe for facilitating close bonds.

The problem with “networking events” is that they are typically based on the “me first” model of networking, which we’ve refuted in the previous posts. If you are networking first of all for what you can get out of people, you’ve blown it. That’s not networking — that’s schmoozing.

Real networkings is first about the value you can bring to others. Certainly, your own needs do matter, and it is right and legitimate to seek help from your network (in fact, it is essential and, when understood rightly, actually another way of helping). The problem is when your own needs become your first priority, when networking is abstracted from mutual interest, and when networking is abstracted from what you have to offer without thought of return.

That’s what’s wrong with most networking events. They are artificial and canned. But when you are interested first in other people for their own sake, then you don’t need networking events. You will naturally encounter people at places of common interest, such as conferences and events, which are the best places to “network” (= meet people!) in the right way.

Should You Make a Rigid Distinction Between Your Personal and Professional Life?

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The answer is no. That’s maybe how things were done in the 1950s, but it’s not how things work in the new economy. Thankfully.

Keith Ferrazzi once again nails this in Never Eat Alone:

Contrary to popular business wisdom, I don’t believe there has to be a rigid line between our private and public lives.

Old-school business views the expression of emotions and compassion as vulnerability; today’s new businesspeople see such attributes as the glue that binds us. When our relationships are stronger, our businesses and careers are more successful.

Elsewhere he adds:

Real connecting insists that you bring the same values to every relationship. As a result, I no longer needed to make a distinction between my career happiness and my life happiness — they were both pieces of me. …

You can’t feel in love with your life if you hate your work; and, more times than not, people don’t love their work because they work with people they don’t like. Connecting with others doubles and triples your opportunities to meet with people that can lead to a new and exciting job.

I think the problem in today’s world isn’t that we have too many people in our lives, it’s that we don’t have enough.

The Real Meaning of Networking

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A few years ago a friend of mine mentioned that he was going to be at an event where he could encounter someone he would really like to meet, but he wasn’t going to introduce himself because it would seem like networking.

There is of course such a thing as the “networking jerk.” This is the guy who is the insincere, ruthlessly ambitions schmooze artist everyone wants to avoid, and you certainly don’t want to become.

However, the unfortunate existence of the networking jerk should not be allowed to give real networking a bad name. My friend is one of the most sincere people I know, and would by no stretch of the imagination be mistaken for the networking jerk. So I encouraged him to reach out to this person. I said to him “but it wouldn’t be networking, really, at least not in the sense you seem to be thinking. Understood rightly, networking is simply about making friends — and doing it sincerely, because people matter, and not because you are trying to get anything out of it other than encouraging someone and recognizing the value of reaching out.”

Keith Ferrazzi nails this in his excellent book Never Eat Alone: “Those who are best at it don’t network — they make friends. …A widening circle of influence is an unintended result, not a calculated aim.” That’s the first rule of real networking.

And the second is this: have something to offer. Be a person who brings benefit, not a leech who sucks people’s time and energy. Ferrazzi nails this again: “Relationships are solidified by trust. Institutions are built on it. You gain trust by asking not what people can do for you, to paraphrase an earlier Kennedy, but what you can do for others. In other words, the currency of real networking is not greed but generosity.”

Understood in this way, “networking” is a very biblical thing to do. It is about helping and being helped. If we care about building up the kingdom of God (Matthew 6:33), then we have to care about “networking,” because the kingdom of God is built of people — most of whom we have not yet met.

The 5 Most Dangerous Creativity Killers

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A great article from the 99%.The 5 most dangerous creativity killers are:

  1. Role mismatch
  2. External end goal restriction
  3. Strict ration of resources
  4. Lack of social diversity
  5. Discouragement/no positive feedback

Here’s one of the most important highlights of the article. There is truth to the fact that constraints often add to our creativity by creating the “entrepreneurial gap” that requires novel solutions (and thus creativity) to cross when resources are scarce.

Sometimes, however, that reality is used to justify strict rationing of resources in an organization and a caviler imposition of restraints on creatives. That is a complete misunderstanding and misapplication of the entrepreneurial gap. As the article points out:

Although self-restriction can often boost creativity, the Harvard study shows that external restrictions are almost always a bad thing for creative thinking. This includes subtle language use that deters creativity, such as bosses claiming “We do things by the book around here,” or group members implicitly communicating that new ideas are not welcome.

Here’s one other important point: a shortage of time is not good for creativity!

While money and physical resources are important to creativity, the Harvard study revealed that mental resources were most important, including having enough time.

Creative people re-conceptualize problems more often than a non-creative. This means they look at a variety of solutions from a number of different angles, and this extensive observation of a project requires time. This is one of the many reasons you should do your best to avoid unnecessary near-deadline work that requires novel thinking. Also, when we are faced with too many external restrictions we spend more time acquiring more resources than actually, you know, creating.

What is the First Thing We Wish Others Would Do To Us?

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Individualize. Understand our uniqueness so that they treat us according to how God has made us, not how they wish he had made us.

This is why those who say “The Golden Rule is off-based — when I treat others how I prefer to be treated, they don’t like it.”

The problem with that statement is that it misses the crucial step. Each of us want to be treated individually and understood accurately. Do that for others first, then do unto them as you would have done unto you if those things were true of you.

One of the Best Lewis Quotes Ever

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CS Lewis:

Who can endure a doctrine which would allow only dentists to say whether our teeth were aching, only cobblers to say whether our shoes hurt us, and only governments to tell us whether we were being well governed?

Not even sure how to categorize that, but it has a thousand ramifications. Great insight.

And the Greatest Enemy of Creativity and Innovation Is…

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Efficiency.

Patrick Lencioni makes the case very well in his article, The Enemy of Creativity and Innovation. Here’s a great part:

I’ve become convinced that the only way to be really creative and innovative in life is to be joyfully inefficient….

Efficiency requires that we subdue our passion and allow it to be constrained by principles of logic and convention. Innovation and creativity require us to toss aside logic and convention, even without the near-term promise of a payoff. Embracing both at the same time seems to me to be a recipe for stress, dissonance and mediocrity, and yet, that is exactly what so many organizations—or better yet—leaders, do.

They exhort their employees to utilize their resources wisely and to avoid waste and redundancy, which makes perfect sense. They also exhort them to be ever-vigilant about finding new and better products or processes, which also makes sense. And yet, combining these two perfectly sensible exhortations makes no sense at all, and only encourages rational, responsible people to find a middle ground, something that is decidedly neither efficient nor innovative.

This is why I don’t talk about efficiency a ton. It matters and has its place. But my goal is effectiveness, and often times the greatest path to effectiveness is quite inefficient.

More on this in my book.

Working Hard is Biblical

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Sounds obvious. Most of the time when people think of a Christian view of work, they think “work hard and be honest.” This is so obvious we easily take it for granted.

But what is the textual basis for working hard? Is it truly biblical, or just a Western idea that we’ve uncritically absorbed?

It is indeed truly biblical. If the West is known for its work ethic, it is in part due to the influence of the Bible. Here are just a few texts, divided into two categories.

1. Paul worked hard, not only in his ministry but also in non-ministry work, in order to give us an example that we all ought to work hard as well:

You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me. In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive'” (Acts 20:34-35).

“For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you. It was not because we do not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate” (2 Thessalonians 3:7-9).

2. Proverbs tells us that if you are slothful in your work you are not only lacking sense and hurting yourself, but are actually akin to a vandal:

“Whoever is slothful will not roast his game, but the diligent man will get precious wealth” (Proverbs 12:27).

“Slothfulness casts into a deep sleep, and an idle person will suffer hunger” (Proverbs 19:15).

“I passed by the field of a sluggard, by the vineyard of a man lacking sense” (Proverbs 24:30).

“Whoever is slack in his work is a brother to him who destroys” (Proverbs 18:9).

Don’t be a vandal. Work hard!