Networking: the Swiss army knife of life

The last 12 months or so have been downright ugly. We’re talking Aunt Matilda-ugly, and you can’t begin to conceive how ugly my aunt is (or was, rest her soul). Sweet woman, but scary ugly. Just as you would not have wanted to be alone and bump into Aunt Matilda in the dark while raiding the fridge at midnight, you do not want to be alone professionally in these scary ugly days.

Whenever Aunt Matilda visited, I protected myself by sticking with my younger brother. I did not go solo into that good night, to paraphrase Dylan Thomas. If I got the midnight munchies, I woke my brother up and dragged him to the kitchen. Those nighttime forays past Aunt Matilda are my earliest memories of the power of networking.

Looking at my own past, the only way I could have persevered through the daunting challenges of growing up was networking. The friends I made and girls I dated were all discovered at school and a church youth group. I’ve also found jobs through networking in a community-service group and through my church. I even discovered a place to live, once upon a time, thanks to network contacts.

My personal experience is that networking is the Swiss army knife of life – a multi-purpose tool that helps with almost any task. Networking has produced positive results in the Triple Crown of existence: finding friends, work and homes.

What’s really amazing about the Swiss army knife of life is that, once you have found work, networking can help you carry out that work. Many of us have been on interdepartmental teams during the course of our careers. Oh what a joy they are: the endless meetings, the all-too-frequent emails, and the massive reports that are created and distributed (and never read).

On really successful teams, however, there can also be the creation of a new product or service within the company. Once upon a time, I was lucky enough to be part of a massive team (teams are highly focused networks). Our team was building a gigantic computer application that would do almost everything except make espresso and do the dishes. We had tons of meetings and massive, unreadable reports. My collection of reports ended up being almost 18-inches tall and was an immovable doorstop.

Along the way, I learned a ton of stuff about databases, project management and budgeting. The team successfully launched a really cool application that did what we had designed it to do. (I remain disappointed with its lack of barista skills, but what can you do?)

Wielding the knife
But enough about my personal networking history. What’s in networking for you? How is the Swiss army knife of life supposed to help you in these scary ugly times we live in? Let’s look at a recent instance: one of your directors wants to explore the possibility of distributing board materials via USB drives, also known as flash drives or thumb drives. In case you are not sure what a USB drive is, it’s a memory device about the size of a nail clipper with a huge amount of memory, easily portable and not very expensive.

Sounds like a pretty nifty idea, doesn’t it? A corporate secretary can collect all the reports and presentations necessary for the next board meeting, load them onto the flash drive in a few minutes and send them out. No need to print all those darn board books, no need to send expensive FedEx packages (USB drives are tiny), no need for directors to lug the bulky books around. No need to create and maintain a secure board portal.

But the corporate secretary in this scenario wonders if this is as good idea as it seems at first blush. How does the secretary find out? He or she turns to the Society of Corporate Secretaries and Governance Professionals (SCSGP), the corporate secretary’s professional network, and asks whether anyone else is distributing board materials this way or is considering doing it in the future.

The answer, it turns out, is a resounding ‘No!’ Dozens of SCSGP members respond to a mini-survey within 48 hours, and while a couple of people think it’s an interesting idea, absolutely no one is doing it or seriously considering it. Most of the members cite security concerns: USB drives are a lot more vulnerable than board portals. And if you’ve ever been amazed at the inventive places directors manage to loose board books, which are approximately the size of the Yellow Pages or my college roommate’s little black book, imagine how easily they’ll lose something smaller than a piece of sushi.

Dragon slaying
Let’s look at a different example. Imagine you are happily preparing your proxy for your annual meeting of shareholders. Everything is sailing along. Suddenly, horror of horrors, John Chevedden rears his head and introduces a proposal. Until now, you’ve managed to escape the reach of Chevedden and his minions, but this year it’s your turn. What to do? Apply for a no-action letter from the SEC – and on what basis? Or implement his proposal in some form?

Once again, the secretary in this scenario asks fellow members of the SCSGP what their experience is, and once again the network produces answers very quickly. The specter of Chevedden is reduced to the size of an annoyance as opposed to the size of one of JRR Tolkien’s cave trolls.

Whatever your needs, networking with SCSGP members is almost always going to provide you with substantial help. What’s more, if your needs can be met by a quick survey or sample documents from members, you can even save money by coming to the society’s website. It’s immodest of me to say this, but what the heck: we’re cheaper than your outside attorneys when it comes to this stuff.

Finally, next month the society is having its 63rd National Conference in San Diego. Want to know what the secret ingredient for National Conference success is? (This is almost as good as the secret formula for Coca-Cola.) Oh, you guessed it: networking. In-person, old-fashioned networking. Even in this era of digital communication, the best way to go wireless is face-to-face.

Sometimes a casual conversation with a colleague solves all kinds of problems, and saves you all kinds of money and angst. In these tough times, do you really want to pass up the ultimate use of the Swiss army knife of life?