Are You Taking Any Prisoners?

As a coda to the conference on women entrepreneurs, last night there was a gathering at the Innovation Center in Philadelphia to hear the results of a survey on the same subject.  I was still on a roll from the previous day, which was a flashback to my first consciousness-raising group in the early 70’s.

As I went on about finding alternative ways to do business when you get blocked, Gloria Rabinowitz, the managing director of Golden Seeds in Philadelphia, an angel venture group that supports women entrepreneurs, said to me  “I like your ‘take no prisoners’ attitude.”

So I have to ask myself, why do I not take prisoners?  Are women expected to?  I haven’t ever been accused of ‘emotional blackmail’ but I guess that would be the equivalent of prisoner-taking.

So here it is, the whole truth, albeit according to me:

If you take prisoners, you take on burdens and distractions.

You will become the imprisoned one.

And my simple advice, whether you are an entrepreneur or not:

Take No Prisoners.

Everyone’s a Hiring Manager

Today, in Pennsylvania at least, everyone’s a hiring manager.

I ran into an old friend at the NY HRO show last week and he asked me why there’s been so much about politics in my blog lately.  I hadn’t really thought much about that.  After all, this blog is about leadership and ordinarily I don’t get to select the chief executive of just any organization so it seemed logical.  But today it seems more than just logical.  It seems, well, just.  As in justice.

Today’s the day that ordinary people, the ones who work for someone else and have never had the responsibility for hiring someone, get to have some say in who we hire for our next president.  The hiring process isn’t that much different than any other (except for the assessment part) – sourcing (networking really works well here!), scrutiny of resumes, multiple interviews, references, the winnowing of the field – all leading up to the final selection.  The difference is, today we are all equal.  Everyone, whether CEO, manager, solo entrepreneur or line worker, gets the same power in the hiring process.

I voted early this morning.  I’m a hiring manager today.  I hope you are too.

Networking for the New Year (and beyond)

I was talking with some people last week who were trying to define “relationship” in the context of networking as a step to defining how to value those relationships.  It was one of those conversations that seems to go on forever and get nowhere because people aren’t thinking in terms of outcome but are getting tied up in their own words.  The next day I was emailing with someone else who wanted to know what had been accomplished and I wrote out my operational definition.  I like it so much (as did the other person) I’m going to do the ultimate narcissistic act I hate doing and will quote myself:

“A relationship is a connection. When you connect one of your relationships to another, you create a new node on the relationship network. The more nodes you create and the stronger they are, the more value you have brought to your entire network.” – Dr. Janice Presser

One of the up and coming New Year’s resolutions I keep hearing from people is that they are going to get out and network more.  I used to just try to bite my tongue and not ask rude questions like, are you out of work?  This year I’m going to focus on creating value for my whole network.  So please, even if the person I introduce to you is not an experienced networker (that is, they haven’t yet learned to offer something to you, too) would you try to help them?  I’ll respect you for it and even if they don’t give you something of value, I’ll try to.  Or, if this works as I believe it does, someone else – another node-creator – will.

Happy 2008!

Giving thanks

It’s been a year of new products, new markets, new customers, new networking contacts. All of those are dependent on people, so it’s people I’m most thankful for. I hope you are too. Or at least if you are thankful for your new toys you’ll realize that it’s people that make you having them possible.

To all my people – the TGI team, the people who aren’t formally on the team but are part of it nonetheless, the people who will be part in the future – I hope you’re celebrating the holiday with people who you really appreciate and who really appreciate you. You deserve it and if they are smart enough to have gotten a seat at your table, so do they.

And now I will tear myself away from work and go join those at the table that invited me today!

Meta-Networking

Networking is getting to be a full time job for some, an industry for others.   I was surprised when the suggested curriculum for my Entrepreneurship class didn’t cover it, so I turned one session into Networking 101, and topped it off with getting Adam J. Kovitz, CEO & Editor in Chief of The National Networker and Executive Director of the Relationship Networking Industry Association to sit, share and – well – network of course – with the students.  I actually met Adam through someone I met at Greater Philadelphia Senior Executive Group (with the tag line, “Networking for Life” you know this has to be great) at another networking group the other guy invited me to (not memorable enough, other than meeting Adam, for a link).  But though we’d talked about business, networking and the business of networking, we’d never really gotten down to the real reason we are both networking evangelists, though admittedly I have come to it relatively late.

It was while meta-networking in front of the class (that’s networking about networking) it suddenly dawned on me that it’s a collaborative form of leadership.  We have the potential to lead the world into a new way of interacting, of synergizing, of creating value.  It remains for us to go from the vision into action.

Time to get those promised articles to the people I met these last two weeks…