Tag Archives: Networking

The Best Things In Business (&Life) Are Free

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Actually not all of them are for example the Dhara Devi in Chiang Mai is one of the best things in life and it most certainly isn’t free 😉

dhara deviHowever an increasing number of things are.  One of the best and simplest ways to accelerate your business (or personal) life and development is to leverage these.  Furthermore if you don’t you risk being left behind – we live in a world that changes at the speed of light – literally as anything new gets tweeted round the world and soon copied.

There’s just one small problem – which is the tsunami of content and free stuff out there. Wading through it takes time – or a guide… Continue reading →

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The Importance of Dating

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Darth Vader doesn’t date. Mind you, based on a poll I saw, Anakin Skywalker and Padme’s on-screen “romance” was judged the least believable ever – so Anakin barely dated either. But they – and “American style” 20thC manipulation marketing – belong in a galaxy a long time ago far, far away.

In our galaxy, here and now, different principles need to apply. In the second part of The Tao of BizDev YouTube trilogy on how Business and hence BizDev has changed in the 21stC I emphasise the importance of dating as an antidote to many of the challenges of 21stC business development.

The Tao of BizDev - Dating

In talking to folks subsequently it’s clear that many – or even most – agree, but few understand all the ramifications. I believe there are five main reasons why dating is vitally important (it is after all The Tao of BizDev’s second principle}: Continue reading →

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Beyond Networking – Micro-Partnerships

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Last week I discussed the problems around networking. One key way into this was these two images:

Fingers-touching1holding-hands

 

 

 

 

Too much “networking” is of the left variety – sometimes a spark will jump across but rarely.  In most cases in a few months time you have no idea who that contact is on your LinkedIn list.

On the other hand (ha!) it can take some time to get to the right image – walking hand-in-hand in the same direction.  Besides, in a world of change, one rarely walks a long path parallel to any person or organisation. Furthermore in a world of overload one can simply lack the time to develop such a “hand in hand” approach.

The answer is micro-partnerships 🙂 Or for those lean startup fans a different type of “P” in “MVP”. What are they? Continue reading →

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21stC Networking – Hands, Rifles, Shotguns and the Russian Revolution

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You must have had those moments when a topic bombards you from all directions. I had that recently with many different sources suddenly bombarding me on the same topic and all agreeing. Uncanny. To spare you the hassle of being besieged and having to think it through yourself here is the current best-practice, 21stC networking theory.

mensheviks

Let’s start by going back just over a century to a dispute between Lenin and Martov over the editorial board of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party newspaper. From tiny acorns do large oak trees grow and this widens into a split between the Bolsheviks (you’ve heard of them) and Mensheviks (finally some purpose to my history O level 😀 ). Ironically the Bolsheviks (from the Russian for “majority”) believed in a tightly knit cadre (you can see how this led quite easily to dictatorship) and the Mensheviks (“minority”) a much broader-based party.

Just in case you think I have lost the plot 😀 … fast-forwarding – do you, like the Bolsheviks, want  handfuls of “party-members” actively contributing to your cause? Or like the Mensheviks hundreds, thousands of passive “party members” on LinkedIn/Facebook et al?

Right now many people Continue reading →

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