Good Morning š - Greg here.
Happy Saturday to everyone whoās made a new connection this week.
If I asked 100 people why networking is important, 99 of them would tell me āto find a new job.ā
Not wrong, but there are other reasons to network.
One of them is to tap into new knowledge and learn from the people you already know.
Today, Iāll be sharing a couple of stories from my own experience that show the power of the knowledge in your network.
This issue takes less than 4 minutes to read.
āI donāt need to network right now.ā
When people tell me they arenāt networking, I ask them āWhy?ā
The most common answer is, āIām not looking for a new job.ā
Those of you who read this newsletter know Iām a believer in networking before you need a new job.
But for people who give me that answer, I have another response:
Networking today can actually make you smarter.
Get Smarter
You acquire knowledge in different ways.
You can read about it, you can go to class to learn about it, or you can get it from firsthand experience.
Another efficient way is to acquire it from other peopleās experiences.
You can get it from people whoāve already solved the problems you're facing.
Find out who has solved the problem and ask for advice.
Sounds simple, right?
However, most people arenāt sitting around like a guru on the mountaintop waiting for you to come to ask them for advice.
Even if they were, would you know how to find them?
Networking allows you to find people who already have the answers to help you gain the knowledge to solve a problem you're working on.
But if the person you need to talk to isnāt already connected to you, they're less likely to help you.
Who are you, and why should they give you their knowledge?
Having a professional connection with them will make them more likely to share their knowledge with you.
AI Is The Future
AI is all the rage right now.
Everyday, thereās a new AI tool to make our lives easier.
Thereās a good chance your company is thinking about AI and how it can be used in your business.
If your boss came to you next week and said, āHow can we use AIā what would you do?
You could search for answers online, but how would you know which solutions were legit and which were hype?
Or, you could send messages to a few trusted connections who work in the same field or industry and ask their advice.
Thatās what I did a few months ago, and it led me to connections who can help me answer my bossās question about AI.
I work in compensation at a large company. We buy a lot of other companies. One of the first things we do in compensation after we acquire a company is to look how much the people at the new company are making compared to our standard compensation data.
To do that, we need to match the jobs at the new company to the jobs at our company.
Sounds easy, right?
Itās incredibly time consuming.
My team has to read the job descriptions from the new company and match them to our job descriptions. Sometimes there are hundreds of jobs.
I believe AI could speed up this process.
As I thought about using AI for this problem, I wanted to know if someone else had already solved it, so I asked my connections in compensation.
Over the years, Iāve connected with experts in compensation at other companies. Some I met at conferences. Some I knew from LinkedIn.
We share info with each other about new approaches to compensation.
One afternoon, I sent the same message to five of these connections:
āIs anyone using AI to match job descriptions?ā
Almost all of them responded. I had phone conversations with them to follow up.
One of my comp friends connected me with someone who had developed something that could work. Itās an AI model that reads job descriptions and then tells you which job title it mostly closely matches.
If we can make this model work, I can save weeks of my teamās time to get a good first pass at the job mapping.
Hereās the thing: The company who developed this solution has almost no online presence.
If I limited myself to searching online for this solution, I would have never found it.
My network had the knowledge to direct me to this solution.
I couldnāt have done it without them.
And they wouldnāt have helped me if I wasnāt already connected with them.
Crowdsourcing A Speech
Iām speaking at a conference in April.
Itās the Unleash America conference in Las Vegas.
My topic is about Employee Engagement Surveys and why they donāt improve Employee Engagement.
I have opinions on this topic, but I am not the worldās leading expert.
So, I decided to get my networkās view on it.
Like my AI research, I sent the same message to several people in my network who I thought would have opinions about this topic.
It turns out the people in my network have a lot of opinions about it.
Some of them sent me research they had done.
Some of them wanted to get together in person to talk about their ideas.
All of them have added insights Iāll be using in my presentation.
This knowledge was sitting in my network ready to be tapped.
Ready to be shared with the world, but I had to ask.
I felt confident enough to ask these people because I had established a connection with them in the past. I had nurtured the relationship by keeping in touch with them over the years.
When I needed to cultivate this knowledge to help with my speech, these people were eager to help me.
Do you think they would have been eager to share if I have never talked to them.
If I sent them a message out of the blue and asked for their thoughts, do you think they would have jumped at the opportunity?
Knowledge Is Everywhere
In order to tap into knowledge no one else has, you need to make connections today.
Find someone you know who has unique knowledge related to your field.
Reconnect with them.
Have online or in-person discussions with them about a topic that interests you.
Accessing other peopleās knowledge is how we get smarter, but you can only tap into it if you develop a relationship with the other person.