How do you explain networking and relationships?

I’m grateful that Professor Mark Haselkorn at University of Washington is allowing me to co-teach a class with him this Fall. The course is called “Design & Management of Complex Information & Communication Systems”. One component of the class includes reading a book by Gary Klein called “Streetlights and Shadows”. My intent is to share the highlights of our weekly reading here.

Last night, some of my good friends complemented me on my strengths with networking, building relationships and staying connected - especially in the era of COVID. As I tried to explain what I’m doing, it got me thinking about our current reading which differentiated explicit and tacit knowledge. For your edification, tacit knowledge is the kind of knowledge that is difficult to transfer to another person by means of writing it down or verbalizing it. On the other hand, explicit knowledge is knowledge that can be readily articulated, codified, stored, and accessed. 

My hope for this article is to share the specific breakdown of explicit and tacit knowledge from the book through the lens of networking, building relationships and staying connected. There are two areas of explicit knowledge and five with tacit knowledge. 

(Explicit) – Declarative knowledge

This is all about how you know to do something. I think about the relationships I formed while learning to play sports. My favorite sport growing up was baseball. I learned how to play most of the positions and how they related to each other. And when I managed my sons’ t-ball and baseball teams, I was able to easily explain the relationships between the positions and how they relate. Another great example is some excellent business development training I received from https://www.bunnellideagroup.com/growbig/. The founder, Mo Bunnell, built out a comprehensive set of knowledge for business development that can be easily “articulated, codified, stored, and accessed” – core to the definition of explicit knowledge. The “how” as it relates to networking or building relationships is simple – pick up the phone, call someone on a consistent basis daily, weekly, monthly, etc. and share some type of gift or piece of information that’s relevant to them personally or professionally.

(Explicit) Routines and Procedures

The author brought forth many examples that made me think of some of my closest friends. One of them is a pilot. He follows hundreds, if not thousands, of procedures and routines to ensure his passengers are aligned with every pilot’s goal – take off, fly, and land the plane safely. Many other friends are doctors and nurses dealing with COVID-positive patients. They have strenuous rules and guidelines in place in terms of PPE and processes to ensure their safety daily. From a personal networking perspective, I have my own routines for keeping in touch with friends on a regularly repeated cadence. I literally have a list of 50+ of my friends printed out and taped to a wall in my office. Almost daily, I’ll look at the list and make a phone call or send an email to someone. 

(Tacit) Perceptual skills

With experience, we notice things that others might miss in a situation. The example that just popped into my head here comes from the last work conference I attended in person (before COVID shut conferences down). We typically do “booth duty” which involves standing in our 10’x10’ booth and hoping potential prospects stop by. My inclination is to leave the booth and walk around the conference floor. I’ve done this over the years enough to realize when someone is open for a discussion versus when they are totally uninterested in talking. And I’m not 100% sure how to explain when to approach someone I’ve never met F2F or not…some of it is body language, some of it is their eye contact with others, some of it is their general demeanor at the time and some might be situational – during a lunch break or the social hour in the afternoon is better timing than two minutes before the next general session. But if you can find the right time to start a conversation, it could be the beginning of a solid relationship versus simply being perceived as a “used car salesperson” at a typical trade show.

(Tacit) Workarounds

Workarounds are a method of adapting procedures in real time. I remember my first class at IBM included training about the “Customer Tailored Sales Call” (CTSC). It was a great (yes – explicit) structure to offer junior IBM salespeople. And I’ve incorporated elements of the CTSC in my preparation and execution of customer meetings. But I also discovered that I’ll cater the engagement process of a meeting to my audience almost every time. Some people want to jump into the details of the business immediately while others prefer to engage socially and personally for most of the meeting and hold off business discussions for the last few minutes of the engagement – or even for the next meeting. I’m a big advocate of scripting your plan to engage with others as you build relationships. But I’m an even bigger fan of being able to adapt to the situation and individual you are engaged with real time with workarounds appropriate to the circumstances.

(Tacit) Pattern Matching

The idea behind pattern matching is to form your intuitions based upon experiences. What I think about here is the timing and method by which I communicate with friends. I’ll keep in touch with friends via many methods – email, text, phone calls, Facetime, Zoom, LinkedIn, Slack, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Every one of my friends uses their own mix of social media and communication tools. I’ve learned that one friend is best to connect with late night via Facebook Messenger while another prefers a direct phone call before starting work in the morning. Now some of this can be accomplished simply by asking the person when and how to engage. But I’ve learned they don’t even know what advice to provide because it’s usually situational with both of us. I’ve done my best to remember how and when to make a connection with my friends based upon their own preferences. Not only is it just polite but it also improves my odds of making a real-time connection.

(Tacit) Mental Models

I’m a huge fan of telling stories…and mental models are all about creating your own story about a situation as a means of interpreting something you can’t explain directly. My company challenges us to come up with new frameworks or methodologies – but it’s not always possible. In the past few years, I’ve gotten much closer with many of my life-long friends. And I realize there are some very explicit things I’ve done to help like reading about happiness or embracing meditation or exploring my own vulnerabilities (thanks Brene Brown!!!). But the story I tell myself about why my relationships are better now than ever before with an individual or couple I’m close with varies with each interaction. One story involves sharing some of my own vulnerabilities and fears while another story might be more about listening more intently during our discussions. I know there are several key pieces but there are just as many (or more) variable pieces as well. And they come together differently with each interaction – so the story varies situationally.

My five friends in the picture with me each live in Seattle. But our relationships evolved in different ways with each of them. I can definitely think about some explicit efforts I made to build our individual and group relationships (like flying to Chicago to watch the Cubs and take a train to a Northwestern football game on a Saturday as the picture depicts).  But there are dozens of more tacit efforts we’ve engaged that I couldn’t explain easily. We’ve found ways to stay connected despite how busy we are in our personal and professional lives. 

My hope for you is to consider what you can do to stay connected with your friends and family in these strange times of social distancing and Zoom calls.