I have recently found linkedin.com, a site that allows you to create a list of friends, associates, and former co-workers. It is an interesting site. I have been exchanging emails with people that I haven’t talked to in years. I have a handful of people that I talk to on a regular basis either through google talk or email but that number has been shrinking over the years. There are some people that I talked to on a daily basis when we worked together but once the physical proximity stopped, we stopped talking as much. Now that we are moving to a hotel type office where you check out a cubicle and store everything in a drawer, I don’t see myself going to the office as much. That plus the $10 per day parking fee limits my desire to drive downtown. This made me think about the people I work with differently. The casual meetings to talk about a football team or a tv show just won’t happen as much. When I go into the office it will be for a purpose and not for social reasons.
Linkedin got me thinking about how I communicate with people and what I typically say. It also got me thinking about how people’s careers have changed or not changed over the years. A few of the people that were my peers are now a CTO, CEO, or owner of their own company. This isn’t true for everyone. I was reading Adrian Cockroft’s blog and I think that success can be directly associated with the amount of sharing that you do.
If you collect information and share it freely, you will become an
expert. You become a magnet for questions, issues and information. Some
people tightly control their expertise, this is a huge mistake as it
gives others incentives to look for alternative experts or to become
experts themselves. If you give out your expertise freely, you become
the go-to person in your field, and gather many more recommendations
from the people you help. Try it!
I have tried this and it is true. If people come to you for answers and you share the questions with others more people will come to you because they know that you researched this before and probably know the answer. When I was at Sun, my manager challenged me to become an expert on any topic of my choosing. I did this and was voted the Solaris expert by my peers because I asked and answered more questions than anyone else. It didn’t mean that I knew more than everyone, or even anyone, it just meant that I was willing to risk it and share. The people who I respected for their ability to share are the ones that are now the executives or own their own businesses. True, some people changed careers completely, but the majority are doing something similar to what they did 10 years ago. Some have become managers, some are doing exactly the same thing just for another company. I personally don’t think that it is a bad thing doing the same thing, it is what I am doing. I have been given the chance to start a new company or start a company of my own. I always hesitated when it came to taking the plunge because I understood the price required by my family for that level of effort. I read somewhere that one of the astronauts that walked on the moon is still married and the rest of the divorced. My theory is that they gave their all to reaching the moon and coming back safely at the expense of their family life. I am not willing to make that sacrifice for the eventual reward of a position.
Enough waxing and waining. I recommend that everyone look at the network of friends and co-workers that you have and ask two questions. First, am I open with information and ideas or do I hold information back, not document procedures and programs so that I can be the expert. Think of it differently. If you share all of this information, many more people will come to you and give you more knowledge than you could find on your own. Second, are the people you work with people that you want to keep in touch with ten years from now? What is it that keeps you together? Is it really just the Monday morning meeting and you dive for your office quicker than the coffee gets cold? Is it working on a project or idea? Is it that your kids are in school together? How will you keep this conversation going ten years from now? Are you building a good foundation and a relationship that provides value to both of you?