9. Networking
Networking; what’s that about in business? What and who does it, does it do any good, and can it be fun? Starting with the what and the who, businesses do it to further their aims, and employees do it to further the goals of their employer, and to promote themselves career-wise. If everything is aligned, these two goals should both be satisfied by networking; a true win-win activity in game-theory-speak.
But what is it? What do you do? Its really quite simple in theory; putting the value-proposition of your company (and yourself) in front of potential buyers or influencers of your company’s goods or services. Or more prosaically, you’re part of the sales-and-marketing machine. I never intended occupying this “space” in a company. I had always imagined R&D to be my niche; how did I make the transition from things to people?
I started as a computer-coder, which these days is classed as an endangered-species. Once you learn your first procedural-language, its pretty easy to pick-up others. I started at college with Algol-68 (God, was it that long ago), then learnt Cobol as my first commercial language. I quite liked the concept of Cobol, a language so easy even your boss could use it. Bollocks of course, which is why we Cobol programmers earnt quite a bit of money. More importantly, I joined an IT-development-and-consultancy-company which produced application-software, which inevitably led me to have to demonstrate the software I (and others) had written, first internally, then externally. This was my first real experience of interacting deeply with humans rather than machines, a very good preparation into the “joys” of networking.
As a quick aside, demonstrating development software is one of the most nerve-wracking activities I can think of, alongside Russian-roulette and do-it-yourself surgery. Its that certain knowledge you are only a click-or-tap-away from total disaster, which leads to two mitigating strategies. The first proactive one is to practice what you are going to show, even script-it, and avoid going off-piste whatever the temptation by being over-confident. The second reactive one is to develop a disaster recovery technique, such as saying with disingenuous confidence “well, I’ve never seen that before”, or “we’re still working to improve the functionality in this area”, or when everything collapses back to a command-prompt or blue-screen-of-death, “OK, I just wanted to demonstrate the quick-exit option” (I really said that once as a joke, but they actually believed me!).
This direction-of-travel towards people rather than things continued. After demonstrating software, the next logical step is to help “spread-the-word” more widely. In business this is done in a number of ways; advertising, via seminars, trade shows and conferences, and these days online. The critical thing is to spend your time and resources where it is most effective, and the most effective way is person-to-person, expert-to-expert. This is why seminars, trade shows and conferences are so important, and where I gravitated towards next.
I admit at this stage I was beginning to enjoy my new work directive. I like being amongst experts in the same field, competing and sometimes cooperating with other organisations to win business. Putting-up little stands, preparing and giving demonstrations, and just feeling-the-vibe was increasingly my thing. For those who are not familiar with how this works, a venue, an exhibition-hall or hotel-meeting-room is booked by an umbrella organisation, and affiliate companies pitch their wares to the invited punters.
As an example, when I was working for a construction company and on the purchasing-side of the equation rather than the selling-side, during my road-warrior phase I often use to drop-in at the NEC (national exhibition centre) in Coventry. One time I dropped-by to visit an ERP (enterprise resource planning) “bash” to keep abreast of the latest software options available. I hadn’t got a ticket, but you could usually buy one on site, or just blag your way in. Not this time. Being resourceful I noticed there was also a machine-tool “bash” going on simultaneously. Knowing the NEC layout, I remembered I could enter this very specialized “do” and walk across to the ERP one. What could go wrong?
Yes, no checks at the door, just smiles from the “bouncers”, and I was in. Only a couple of ladies with a clip-board to cope with. “A couple of quick questions” they asked, and of course I agreed. “Would you say your company is a big, medium or small user of milling-machines?”. I knew nothing about milling-machines, let alone if we had any at all across our “empire”, so I played safe with “medium”. Next came “are they combined drilling-milling, or pure milling ones?”, Err, “pure milling” I replied. Then “do they have an automatic offset capability, or is this still manually-set”. Mmm, “still manual” I blurted. They looked a little surprised, then said “would you then be interested in exploring an automatic-option with the TX-5000 series from the Satsuma-Corp? “. With confidence I said “yes”, grabbed their glossy brochure, made my escape, and vowed never to do that again.
The selling-side of exhibitions is even more fun. You have time to prepare, so demonstrations rarely go-wrong. You organize your bits-and-pieces to give away, such as brochures, fact-sheets, and my favourites; widgets. A widget in this context is a promotional object, such as pens with your company logo on it, calendars likewise, tee-shirts, base-ball-caps etc, even ranging up to one-off physical objects such as paper-weights (who-the-hell really needs a paperweight?) and smiley-faces attached by a spring to a heavy-base. This is what I came into the supply-chain space for (not); forget about the “white-heat-of-technology” and focus on Daffy-Duck instead. This pretty much reflects the dismal-reality of a maturing-market; “screw the R&D budget, we need to double the marketing-spend”. it’s a hell-of-a-lot more fun though.
Being a nerd at heart, what I find intellectually interesting about these events is what they say about a particular market-sector at any one time. Every sector has its hot-topics; the new stuff which everyone gets excited about and are ready to gamble-on (correction; make a reasoned-decision on how to waste the company’s money!). I’m, being cynical, but most hot-topics quickly prove to have been lukewarm at best. The trick is to quickly identify those that are genuinely transformative and “get-in-there” where all the money is being spent. In my time in IT the “supply-chain” was certainly one of these, and I was at the centre of it (happy days!). These-days in the 20’s its AI and quantum-computers. Unfortunately, capitalism dictates that today’s hot topic rapidly becomes yesterday’s “sliced-bread” as it becomes commoditized. This is explored by the “Austrian-School” economist, Dr Heinrich Hamburger from the Vienna-Institute-of-the-Dismal-Sciences, in his seminal work “Das Kapital ist Gefukt?”, so enjoy the boom while it lasts!
The other thing you do at these events is personal networking. While your colleague is manning/womaning the stand, you can swan-around the hall and cosy-up to your competitors. This is where you can find your next job. A few words, names and numbers exchanged, and that initial interview is all but guaranteed. When I decided to jump the corporate-ship entirely and go-it-alone I knew it was this talent I had to develop to drive me and my partner Marvella’s nascent supply-chain implementation company.
We’d been in Amsterdam for about a year and I decided I needed some networking practice. We noticed there was the annual ex-pats “do” where various organizations bid for their spend and attention, so signed-up for tickets and we went. There were apartment rental agencies, ex-pat shops, companies focusing on moving, nurseries, life-insurance, banks - all the hangers-on you could imagine. It was held in the old stock-exchange designed by the greatest Dutch architect, Berlage, who had predicted the end of capitalism so that his building would eventually no longer be needed. Indeed, it wasn’t, the exchange having moved on to an electronic platform leaving the space available for hire. So much for the fragility of capitalism! We’d actually been there before for one of our SM/fetish events which had worked quite well in that environment (a large hall, lots of dark side-rooms and alcoves for “play”, etc.).
Marvella and I mixed-and-moved and things were going well (you don’t forget how to ride a bicycle). We came across the American-Society stall and decided to engage. The head-honcho was there and we swopped notes on acclimatization to a new country, understanding the locals; the usual kind-of-stuff. My partner, a newbie to this sort-of-thing, stood and listened (there’s never any chairs at these events for some reason). At a natural pause she entered the fray. Looking around she commented “you know, I still can’t get used to this” to which our American host enquired in his cultured east-coast accent, “oh really, why not?”, to which she instantly replied “everyone’s got their clothes on!”. Mmm, still some work to do I thought.
After that we started to go to the trade events hosted by my previous employer. For those of you contemplating setting-up your own business and wondering who your customers are going to be, this is the answer. You “adopt” them from your previous-employer (this is a euphemism for “steal”). If you are really smart, this doesn’t even need to be contentious. Its quite often the case a customer is regarded as “a pain in the arse” and your ex-employer is quite happy to cut a subcontracting deal with you to take them off their hands. I particularly liked the ones they held in Geneva, Switzerland somewhat surprisingly still being leading edge in high-value-manufacturing and drugs. Marvella could also just effortlessly enter a bar and minutes later leave with the sacred green-leaf; “I am not worthy, I am not worthy” (Wayne’s World).
Nowadays the internet and social media have revolutionized things. This is where professionals can set-out their own stalls, with self-deprecating modesty in short supply. This leads to “achievement-inflation” where you need to divide-by-two or more before you get anywhere near the actual-accomplishments of most individuals. I boldly buck this trend by simply stating the truth – “genius for hire” backed-up by my academic achievements; a PhD from UofL (university-of-life) and the founder of AGD-Research, whose international supply-chain-consultancy whose clients include the big-five consultancies and a galaxy of fortune-five-hundred companies, and whose research efforts into computer-science, philosophy and the SM/fetish scene, needs no introduction. Strangely, I never did get any paid work via LinkedIn (I must update my profile and stop being so modest – self-awareness is a terrible-thing!).