Networks across geographical boundaries
As I plan for my business in 2010, I think about what has changed during the last decade in the way business is conducted. I think about the generation of young people who are embarking on their own business for the first time and the tremendous advantages the current environment offers them. We are in a time of change that is so dramatic that without reservation I can say, they have more to teach me about doing business than I do them. That is to say, everything has changed.
I am reminded of a young Winston Churchill who participated in a cavalry charge at Omdurman in 1898. By 1914, he was Lord of the Admiralty, presiding a highly mechanized war fleet in World War I. Just two decades later, Churchill led a country in a World War that concluded with an atomic bomb. If nothing else, his leadership skills included an amazing ability to adapt and incorporate change into his world view.
Similarly, we are faced with unprecedented change in the way we do business. Personally, the past year alone has brought monumental changes because of the recession. Like many of us, I have had to think about moving out of my comfort zone of face-to-face business and into uncharted territories of social media and business solutions via technology. Like it or not, opportunities are out there, but are part of a vast network that can be experienced as chaotic and overwhelming.
If you came into your own in the last decade, this may simply be what you know, in which case you have an opportunity to lead the rest of us. What for us is new, for you is simply convention.
Ten years ago we would have taught you about our conventions, and said…
- networking must be a face to face proposition;
- your status depends on what school you went to and what company you work for;
- business proposals require hours of sit down meetings and lots of paper;
- you must keep business and personal realms separate;
- you must belong to associations to access information, and you must pay a premium to belong;
- business is primarily about “who you know”;
- You should expect to drive or fly for hours to attend routine meetings.
While all of the above is still present today, particularly in the corporate world, no one can dispute that the deep impact of the recession coupled with the urgency spurred by the world of technology and social media has changed all the rules. Just as in the time of rapid change in Churchill’s life, those who scramble and adapt today are going to lead the way in the future.
Young people entering business today will expedite the rapid change and those of us who entered the business world in the last century will see our ideas of doing business fade away or become vestiges, just as life in the late 1800’s underwent radical transformation by the second decade of the 1900’s.
New conventions, i.e., the fixed customs of today, are too numerous to count, but in my mind the most important include:
- we build our networks across geographical boundaries without face-to-face contact (although that will always be valuable, it is not required);
- we value merging our personal life passions with our business persona, i.e., bringing the “whole” person to work life;
- we can access information in real time, without reliance on gatekeepers, i.e., associations, news agencies, academic institutions, professional publications;
- experience confers status;
- etiquette tends toward openness and transparency, i.e., all are invited to events and we share what we learn.
If we can wrap our brains around this new way of thinking and acting (new for those of us who came into our own in the past century) we will be able to add value to the new age with our wisdom and life experience. If we refuse to let go of the old ways, we will not only miss the excitement of the current age, we will forfeit our own legacy.
I freely admit that for a long time in my working days I clung to the old ways, proclaiming loudly that the innovations my younger colleagues were introducing were trivial and counter-productive. What I failed to see was that I was, without realizing it, adopting them right and left for my own use. While my methods remained substantially the same, the substance of what I was doing shifted, so that I was myself asking the questions which the younger generation had raised. And the questions you ask determine the answers at which you arrive. I am aware now that I owe a great deal to the innovators but that at the time I was too stubborn to admit it. Still, having said that, I think it’s important to understand that it is always a cardinal mistake to throw out the baby with the bathwater. My young colleagues on occasion dispensed with the rigorous methodology we had made our own, and their work didn’t profit thereby. We, the older generation, very often didn’t appreciate the ardor of their concerns and our work more often than not slid off into the irrelevant. All of us need to express ourselves in the language of our generation in order to be intelligible. Equally, we must strive to arrive at competent translations of the language of our predecessors as well as that of our successors, lest we end up existing in splendid isolation. This I believe to be a truth applicable to both the professional and the private spheres.