For 40 years, I have been propagating in all my management lectures that networking is one of the ‘keys to success’. I was so glad to see, in the last few months, how the government of India has been working on the ‘networking principle’ to work out links with the governments of UK and also Qatar, UAE, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Indonesia. This should have happened many, many years ago but, like for most individuals, for us as a nation, it also did not happen earlier!
It has been accepted as a management principle that you need different skills at different stages of executive development. At the entry level and during the initial years, you need a high dose of technical skills. As you move further up the ladder to middle management, you need a higher dose of human skills as well; at the topmost level of management, you also need the highest dose of conceptual skills to look into the future; to look at the organisation as a whole; to look at the big picture rather than at disjointed parts.
To these three skills, I would add a fourth, especially at the middle and senior levels of management. It is the skill of networking. To successfully network within the organisation and outside, is to facilitate executive success. Some networkers—you can easily identify them—are the gregarious type. They are ‘born networkers’. However, most of us need to train and discipline ourselves to network.
Satish was the unit head of a large company which produced and marketed a wide range of cotton textiles. With the changing market scenario, Satish and his team decided to expand the product range with imported silks. The marketing manager, Ravi, was entrusted with the job of outsourcing silk from East Asia and ensuring that this whole exercise was done profitably. Ravi struggled with this project for six months. He told me that when the quality was found appropriate, the price quoted was too high or vice versa. But Ravi did not know that Kher, the unit head of the trading division of the same company, had managed to identify a source from Hong Kong for silk supplies of acceptable quality and price. Kher’s trading division, which was housed at a different location, was already supplying large quantities of silk to customers.
Ravi was trying to manage on his own. Kher did not know of Ravi’s situation being a case of ‘the left hand not knowing what the right hand does’. Had there been better communication within the company, and had Ravi been network-oriented, he could have saved effort, time, and money and achieved success. The time to make friends is before you need them - that is the secret to good networking. You seldom make good friends in an emergency, where you try to create a friend post haste, to assist you in a problem.
It has been said that one of Dhirubhai Ambani’s great strengths—apart from his vision, courage and financial wizardry—was his ability to network. Many years ago, he was seen crossing over to the foyer at the Oberoi, Mumbai, to where Iyengar was seated (waiting for a friend). Many decades earlier, Iyengar was a sales executive who used to make calls to sell textile machinery to Reliance. Ambani had not met Iyengar for over 30 years! Both had grown in their different ways and at different levels. Ambani’s speed had been dazzling. Yet, Ambani never forgot. He went out of his way to greet the man who used to make sales calls on him, and in some ways helped him to grow. Iyengar, on the other hand, did not forget the warm embrace and the insistent invitation from Ambani to have coffee with him the following Tuesday at 11 am. Very clear, very definite, very warm and genuinely following the golden rule: the time to make friends is before you need them.
A management consulting firm in Mumbai with a large turnover works with a core group of just four consultants. It takes on large projects and operates across 16 countries. The secret is networking. Bridges have been built over the past 15 years with at least 25 consulting specialists in India, and with consulting companies in 16 countries.
Networking comes about both by accident and by design. If you keep your antennae up and your mind open, you will meet people in different walks of life who will cross your path. They will remain acquaintances, but some may even become business associates or friends.
Networking by design may start with school and college, which becomes the old school tie network. It can come through hobbies, from penpals to stamp collections. It can come through membership of professional associations like the Institute of Chartered Accountants, or the Institute of Management Consultants. It can come through membership of social service organisations like the Rotary Club, Lions Club, or the Young Presidents Club. It can come through seminars, conferences and workshops, and the connections that one makes at these events.
At the Institute of Management Consultants’ US convention in 1996, a networking exercise was done where a list was made of what works and what doesn’t work.
To begin with, what works in networking is being specific about expectations, having the ability to listen, knowing exactly what you want; being enthusiastic; being organised; and being able to separate work needs from personal likes and dislikes.
What does not work is abusing a contract; having a mismatch; showing condescension or perhaps, arrogance; being dishonest; insincere or impatient; not paying a fair share; indulging in snap judgement and self-promotion, and not treating others the way you would want to be treated.
It all seems so simple and so obvious. Yet, it is in simple areas where most managers fail. Lord Leverhulme so aptly voiced his concern many years ago, when he said, “Management consists of doing simple things, doing them regularly, and never forgetting to do them.” Networking is one of these ‘simple things’.
As we move forward in the 21st century, to a period of lean organisations with considerable amount of outsourcing, where some companies are even moving towards being virtual organisations, networking will be the key to success.
Networking may even be the key to survival.
We might as well make friends before we need them!
(Walter Vieira is a Fellow of the Institute of Management Consultants of India - FIMC. He was a successful corporate executive for 14 years, capping his career as Head of marketing for a Pharma multinational, for India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka- and then pioneered marketing consulting in India in 1975. As a consultant, he has worked across four continents. He was the first Asian elected Chairman of ICMCI, the world apex body of consultants in 45 countries, in 1997. He is the author of 16 books, a business columnist, international conference speaker and has been visiting professor in Marketing in the US, Europe, and Asia for over 40 years. He was awarded Lifetime Achievement Award for Consulting in 2005, and for Marketing in 2009. He now spends much of his time in NGO work - Consumer Education and Research Centre, IDOBRO, and some others.)
