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Networking blows. I think this is generally a consensus opinion. Not too controversial, not too crazy.
You’re thinking it. I’m thinking it. The dweeb across the Happy Hour from you wearing the bullshit “Eddy from Delta Napkin Distribution” name tag is also thinking it. So, why do we put up with it, why is it important, and how do we make it better?
Networking is something like a labor of love, and I think that, with enough exposure therapy and subconscious rationalization, we can learn to tolerate (dare I say, enjoy) it. Being in a particularly network-driven industry has given me a first-hand appreciation for the power of networks and the ways in which it can take a village to elevate an individual, company, or idea.
Your network may be your net worth, but why is that?
Because your network is leverage and networks increase the surface area of luck.
You’ve Been Thinking About It All Wrong
We put up with networking for a variety of reasons: we’re job hunting, we’re sales prospecting, we’re expertise extracting, etc. I think that this is generally a misguided approach to the game, and comes from a misunderstanding of why we network at all. Yes, many distasteful circumstances in life will force us into positions of proselytizing ourselves, our products, or our needs, but I don’t really think that these are the correct environments to call ‘networking’. The traditional networking event feels too transactional, and thus vampiric more often than not. These cute little conferences present opportunities to attend an event that will drain your energy or leech your time. I would call these ‘hunting’ environments, not networking environments. Brutal.
On a selfish level, the purpose of networking is to expand your reach and amplify your influence by intertwining your social webs with as many varying circles as possible. But again, you’re keying in on the wrong parts of that sentence- ‘expand your reach’, ‘amplify your influence’. These are byproducts of successful networking, but not the fundamental aspects of it that will bring you any joy or create any mutually beneficial value. Those reasons underlie my aspirations and my needs, disregarding the wants, desires, and aspirations of Eddy from Delta Napkin Distribution across from me. No one has ever extracted or created value from relationships built by circling a social event like a status vulture, assessing each attendee’s standing as it relates to your desires, and swooping in to extract every morsel of information from your hapless gin and tonic sipping prey.
Valuable networking is defined by the intertwining of your social webs. It should be thoughtful, enjoyable, and subtle. A career is a marathon and, when seeking success within time frames measured in decades, you’re ultimately looking to “play long term games with long term people” (Naval). Networking is the active process of recruiting individuals into the game you would like to be playing. That’s the intertwining, and that’s where the magic happens. When you’ve unlocked a trusted counterparty with whom you can play iterative, compounding games over longer time horizons than your competition, you’re planting the seeds for potential wins. You don’t know what will sprout or when, but you’re cultivating little seedlings of chance. You’re increasing the surface area of luck.
The Surface Area of Luck
So, we’ve established that networking should be more meaningful, and performed with the intention of cultivating relationships with depth. But why is it important?
Networks Are Leverage
Humans are inherently social and, unless you work in a field where being a solo contributor can elevate you to the top, you will inevitably need a network. In an increasingly competitive and specializing workforce, it is almost impossible for any one individual to retain all the skillsets required to push complex projects forward. Interlinking social circles allow you access to individuals with tastes, talents, and connections beyond your scope.
The idea of the ‘lone genius’ toiling away (the ‘build it and they will come’ of startup lore) is an absolute myth. You can build a brilliant product, but if you can’t get it into more hands, more efficiently than your competition, you will ultimately lose. You can be the best candidate, but that point is moot if you can’t get in the right doors. Think about how many legacy systems are subpar, but entrenched sheerly due to their distributional advantages. The same is true for builders as a whole- artists, creators, business people, you name it. A single person burning so brightly as to overcome all obstacles is an outlier of an outlier at best, and a gross exaggeration at worst. As we’re strategizing our own life and careers, it’s wiser to think in averages that optimize your chances of winning. Engaging in scenes of genius (‘sceniuses’ - a Words with Wynn forthcoming on this) increases your pace of iteration and provides you the expertise of people working on similar problems. How you find ‘your people’ and pull them close is through networking. Once established, a carefully curated network is a force multiplier to your actions.
Your skills are fire, your network is gasoline.
You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know, But Someone Does
So few challenges in both business and life are truly unique to us. For 98% of experiences, there is likely someone who has struggled a similar battle. Nurturing a network is seeking diamonds in the rough and once assembled provides access to unique mother lodes of insight otherwise unobtainable.
There is a classic idea in finance that any given investment has some probable distribution of outcomes, and it is our job as investors to assess and/or narrow those probabilities to tip the odds in our favor. An element of this is grappling with the idea of unknown unknowns- information that would be inaccessible to you or outcomes you could never even anticipate.
Your network helps you to perform this type of diligence on an interpersonal level. Few ideas survive contact with the real world unchanged, and the nodes of your network help you to assess, rethink, and reshape them as the realities of whatever situation play out. You don’t know what you don’t know, but if your network is strong, wide, and deep enough… someone just might.
Increasing Your Surface Area for Luck
Networking is like allocating points to Luck in the skilltree of life:
It doesn’t always hit.. But when it does, that could be your big break. You will still need the other skilltrees to execute on a vision and capitalize on the opportunities provided, but diligently networking helps to guide your exposure to less predictable upshots.
A prime example from my personal experience is MBA programs. They say you attend and blow a mortgage “for the network”, but what does that mean? Stated or otherwise, the implicit understanding is that you’re entering a pressure cooker of other similarly qualified individuals that will likely continue their successful arcs post-grad, which will hopefully be accelerated by whatever meager academic learnings the candidates glean during their twenty four month bacchanal. It’s really about optionality and reach. You emerge from a top program with a network of 100+ close connections pollinated across a variety of industries and disciplines, of whom you never know may be a future customer, partner, or coinvestor. In my case, the optionality is that a single deal from a single of those relationships in the next decade could potentially pay for the cost of admission many times over (setting aside all the friendships, personal growth, and self actualization branding you can also shill). But this isn’t limited to elite academic programs- loci of concentrated talent elsewhere garner the same benefits (consulting shops, investment banks, elite startups – see: PayPal Mafia). This underlying logic is precisely why so many of these opportunities are so competitive.
Drawing a business parallel, the longer I work in startup land the more I contemplate the following:
This is where my thinking around social media has completely transformed. Yes, lots of it is performative and annoying and vapid, but I think that the average person in my IRL social circles underweights how unbelievably powerful it can be. Social media is distribution- distribution of your work and ideas. It is the leverage to increase your surface area in a uniquely scalable way. I can personally attend happy hours five days a week, and never reach founders, customers, and potential partners the way I can through one well-wrought blog post. Producing a body of work online provides proof of your thinking and abilities in a way that is discoverable by others. It sets out a beacon around which the type of individuals that you would like to invite into your game can coalesce. They can reach and find you. It’s engineering serendipity.
Of course, it’s not for everyone. Social media isn’t the only way, but is a way. And one that is largely disregarded by not only boomers, but by many of my millennial peers as well.
Ultimately, networking itself inherently increases your surface area regardless of the medium. That’s the key.
Networking That Doesn’t Suck
Truthfully, this is a nut I’ve yet to crack. But, like a squirrel in fall, I’m eyeing it closely.
Traditional networking events suck for the reasons I’ve already outlined, but I don’t think there’s a singular magic bullet. Akin to social media vs. traditional networking methods, it comes down to personal preference and style.
For some (the Andrew Yeung’s of the world), the strategy can be Gatsby-scale soirees, enticing deal flow as well as fickle femme fatales from across the bay.
I experienced this first-hand during one of my previous employment stints. Being the premier social organizer in your cottage industry certainly has its perks for attracting eyes and talent, especially if you wrap it into the mythology of your company’s culture.
Furthermore, creating enviable experiences and prioritizing authentic connectivity is a very viable strategy. It’s an attractive gambit in the midst of a generational loneliness pandemic:
But the ‘sauce’ is maintaining that culture as your events scale (not unlike a startup).
An alternative angle I’ve been noodling on is prioritizing small batch social events, ideally more curated and bespoke. My current ambition is a series of Lemmon Drops, 6-8 invitee happy hours/dinners without the explicit expectation of networking so much as connecting people of similar ambitions. My theory being that smaller batches helps to reduce a version of the bystander effect whereby your friends and colleagues will be more likely to engage and gain something of value from connections made through more intimate environments; pushing through to genuine conversations vs. 15 two-minute intros at an overcrowded tech mixer, none of which delve beyond the extractive surface level stats (“What do you do? Where’d you go to school?”).
I’m coming around to the idea that you ultimately have to create the social experiences you want. If every room you’re forced to network in sucks, either you suck (likely) or you aren’t devoting the effort to make them not suck.
These ideas of course are nascent. Check back with me in six months (or help me organize if you’re in Dallas - lol).
Conclusion
Networking is hard. There are a rare few of us for whom this kind of grind isn’t taxing. Perpetually putting yourself out there and creating new social touchpoints requires constant effort, and I think that this is precisely why the vast majority of people let it slide in their personal development even when they recognize its importance. But that’s where the internet age levels the playing field for the introverted and geographically constrained. Access to infinite social networks requires but the effort to tap into them.
That being said, there are many ways to play the networking game and it ultimately comes down to the careful alignment of your aptitude with your efforts. Networking is about finding your preferred channels for cultivating connection, then taking the steps to diligently leverage them. If done well, your intertwining social circles will enhance your odds of catching lightning in a bottle.
And if your career’s a thunderstorm, networking is like building a conductor. Sure, you might find lightning without it, but it’s much easier to attract if you’re running around with a metal pole.
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