Inventing Elephants

The psychological effects of measuring have stood out for me during my first few weeks on LinkedIn, because the number helps me focus my ideas for managing and expanding my network.

For a number of years I've been essentially oblivious to the concept.  I would laugh about being "bad with names" and tended to forget whether or not I'd already met a particular colleague or supplier.  Sure, I had a stack of business cards but I couldn't really say much them.  On the other hand, I would make deeper connections and have interesting conversations at conferences and such, but I didn't really know with who.  I enjoyed the person's company while we were talking but once they were out of sight, they were also out of my mind.

This wasn't going to be enough if I wanted to be successful in a more people oriented aspect of business.  I needed to reach out beyond my satisfaction in the occasional encounter. 

I joined LinkedIn because it seemed a means to stay aware of and easily contact a range of people.  I looked up colleagues, friends, family, pretty much anyone I could think of.  It was fun watching my circle expand.  I'd never used Facebook or MySpace, so the experience was new to me.

Seeing LinkedIn measure the number of my contacts and list them inspired me to increase the number.

And it makes me think about how I want to grow that network and what it means to me.

If I wanted to bump the number up quickly, I could do that.  There are whole groups of people on LinkedIn who have agree to not penalize invitations sent to them from strangers and often accept them.  I understand the concept of networking that way - that sometimes the success of the network depends on how many people you know and a passing contact may be sufficient.  But I'm more comfortable with the idea that anyone on my list stands out to me and, hopefully, I to them.

So instead I'm concentrating on selecting a few people that I interact with a little bit, both online and off, and working on developing more of a relationship so that I'm comfortable asking them to connect.  I also want to establish habits for continuing to make contact over time so that I don't have to miss out on knowing what happened or being able to return to a conversation when I see something that relates to it.

Balancing the metric and the outcome in my head is more difficult that I expected.

It's so easy to slip into internal language that emphasizes only the count, letting the number of contacts the other person has, or even whether they're on LinkedIn at all, influence whether I choose to build a relationship with them or with someone else.  It's easy to talk about building that relationship for the sake of adding to my count, even though
the person comes first.

For example, one thing that excited me when I first started exploring the site was that I'd have reminders of people and ways to contact them.  I wouldn't have to worry so much about losing contact information, because at least one email address would always be available.  I'd also be able to see certain changes and know about them before I talked to the person again.  Although I do wish that there was a way to take private notes about your actual conversations and meetings with your contacts.  Some sort of an integrated database would be very helpful.

At the moment, LinkedIn is a system for measuring my networking efforts and thus it provides me a tool for me to manage them, giving me a personal illustration of Drucker's principle.  We'll see if I'm able to build a better set of habits around it.

It makes a difference when you can see and touch something for yourself.  It's just the way we're wired.

Material Connexion made this a key feature in their consulting business developing materials solutions and innovation.  They keep a physical library of different types of materials with over 1500 actual samples displayed on tiles in their New York City office and another 3000 available on request.  If you're not near NYC then they have offices, and libraries, globally in four major cities or they will pack up a box of samples and information of materials relevant to your problem and send them to you. 

Their primary focus seems to be materials for unique consumer products or architectural experiences, which make sense as those would be the applications where the aesthetic nature of the material would be important.  I was especially taken with the idea of translucent concrete.  All the associated property data is connected to the physical data so the designer or engineer doesn't lose sight of whether the material will fit their performance needs as well. 

Finding this company through an article in C&EN just gave me a thrill, although I don't think I've conveyed that excitement very well. The type of work they do technically is the kind that got me interested in earning my degree in materials science in the first place.  Now that I'm interested in business too the aspects of connecting to the customers and assisting with their product development rings bells as well.  If it wasn't for that NYC location I think I'd be submitting a resume just for the coolness factor of the whole endeavor, even though I'm happy where I am.  As it is I might submit to join their brain and talent bank when I have a little less on my plate (class starts up again next week).

There's this great used bookstore down in Manassas, Virginia called McKay's.  When we go down to visit my husband's parents we'll take whatever dvds or books we no longer want to keep down there.  This time we did quite a cull and amassed a good chunk of trade credit and this is how I spent my part. 

A couple of the business books I'd already been intending to pick up at some point, such as The Goal, but most just caught my eye as being of interest.  There's a bit of fiction and art in the mix as well.  I won't be going to the library any time soon or it will distract me from reading some of these.  Of course, I have another stack of books this tall in the house that I haven't read yet either... 

Do they have a conversation?  Or do they keep trying to ask each other questions to get the other person talking? 

This scenario has been bugging me a bit since I read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie a couple weeks ago.  His suggestions for building relationships include becoming genuinely interested in the other person, talking in terms of their interests, and listening well to them.  He points to examples when all he did was listen, with an appropriate interjection here or there, and he found out later that the other person shared how wonderful a conversationalist that Dale Carnegie was.

But what happens when two people who have truly taken this book to heart meet?

Is it like a staring contest where the weaker willed person breaks down and begins talking about themselves?  Do they take turns politely?

Or is it so rare that people are willing to listen that this almost never happens?

I had always thought that a good conversation involved adding in your own opinion, switching off who was relating their experiences or providing a different point of view.  The tricky thing was figuring out for each person when a pause was an invitation or would be perceived as an interruption. 

But this isn't the approach being suggested.  I can understand how listening with your full attention with occasional intelligent questions and comments can make the other person feel good about being with you and build up a relationship.  But do you feel good about being with them?  If you're networking for business or in a sales process, then that's one thing, but is it a good way to build friendships? 

Is a relationship building conversation different than an idea developing conversation?

It's what you know that helps you develop relationships with who you know.  - Stephanie Palmer in Good in a Room

When I began working at my current location seven years ago the secretary and I were the only women in an office of fifteen.  I started looking at the sports page in the morning before I went to work so I'd know what the guys were, nine times out of ten, going to be discussing in the hallways and made sure I knew how my alma mater was doing when football season rolled around.  Otherwise I'd just end up standing there, smiling and nodding and not really being noticed.

It was a common sense response at the time and not a deliberate plan, but when I saw this line in Palmer's book I realized the truth of it and how it could be used in a more deliberate fashion.  It's a good reason to deliberately pick a handful of varied topics that appeal to you and others are likely to be interested in and follow them.

I am suggesting that you develop your knowledge base so that you can increase the speed at which you find common ground and build rapport. - a few more lines down in the same section...

Then I wondered about the opposite.  Does talking about what the other person doesn't know create distance?  I remember bringing up topics and getting a feel that the other person took a mental step back.  I know I've done it when someone else has initiated a conversation, wondering if we're going to have anything in common. 

As a corollary, when is it worth the risk to bring up something oddball, or at least not mainstream for the region, such as building robots or following the sport of curling or reading about quantum mechanics?  As it happens, I did the latter in high school, but only have a touch of familiarity with the other two. 

If the other person is also involved it can bring about enthusiastic camaraderie, deeper than a more mundane topic, or it could be one of those distancing moments.  Or they might be interested and want to hear all about it but not be able to contribute significantly to the conversation.  This is good on the one hand, but on the other it's probably not helping form much of a connection.