{"id":139,"date":"2010-05-13T08:15:11","date_gmt":"2010-05-13T15:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/?p=139"},"modified":"2010-05-13T08:15:11","modified_gmt":"2010-05-13T15:15:11","slug":"network-and-influence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/network-and-influence\/","title":{"rendered":"Network and influence"},"content":{"rendered":"

I gave a short talk to an internal MS community this week. The topic of the day was \u201cinfluence\u201d, and I thought it was appropriate to talk about the value of building (and maintaining!) an informal network \u2013 and the impact of that network on influence. The advice to have an informal network isn\u2019t new \u2013 I bet it\u2019s mentioned in the majority of books on leadership, but I don\u2019t think enough people who want<\/em> to be leaders (or be influential) take the point seriously enough. Your network is a resource for discovering new information as much sounding board,for ideas you want to share.<\/p>\n

Your network is also an opportunity for you to build credibility. I know people who claim<\/em> to be leaders. Sometimes they claim to be a leader because they\u2019re in a position of authority. Other times, their \u201cleadership\u201d is just a self proclaimed act. In my world, you aren\u2019t a leader until other<\/em> people say you\u2019re a leader. You don\u2019t get it any other way than building credibility and trust among those you want to lead \u2013 and your network is a great place to build that credibility and trust across people who don\u2019t have to listen to you if they don\u2019t want to.<\/p>\n

There are other values of a network. In HWTSAM<\/a>, I talked about the Test Architect Group (TAG) at Microsoft. TAG is a collection of senior testers who meet regularly to talk about a variety of testing topics.<\/p>\n

\n

The value of having Microsoft\u2019s most senior testers regularly review, brainstorm, and dissect solutions for complex test problems is immeasurable. In recent years, TAG has become something of a sounding board for new thinking, new methods, or new tools in testing. Presentations and demonstrations of ideas and implementations from test groups spanning every Microsoft division fill many of the meeting agendas. The value and depth of the feedback that the TAG provides is respected and sought after. A few meetings a year are reserved for \u201cTAG business,\u201d which includes discussions about company-wide initiatives driven by TAG
and other projects where TAG is a significant contributor (such as the MSDN Tester Center). <\/p>\n

Perhaps the largest benefit of the regular meetings is in the value of networking. The extensive peer discussions and the view into the variety of work done across the company that is presented give TAG members much of the knowledge and information they need to make strategic decisions that affect the entire company.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019ll say it again because it\u2019s huge \u2013 the value of this particular tester community is the network<\/em>. The fact that we talk to each other about what we\u2019re working on gives us a small-world network \u2013 a huge reduction in degrees of separation between just about any testing knowledge in the company.<\/p>\n

Yet \u2013 many people don\u2019t take advantage of their opportunities to build their network. They don\u2019t have the time<\/a> – they think their day job is more important, or have something else to do they think is more important. It\u2019s hard \u2013 last week I was in a great \u201challway conversation\u201d, but I found my mind wandering as I wondered if I should really be back in my office doing \u201creal work\u201d (I didn\u2019t, now I\u2019m behind, but it was worth it). Alas, some people who do<\/em> consistently prioritize their commitment to building their network find that their superiors don\u2019t share the priority and look down on work spent \u201coutside of their core job\u201d (my advice for these people is to find a new job). <\/p>\n

I was asked once whether it was leaders who built great networks, or if people who built great networks became leaders. My old answer was that it was a toss up. Today, as I think about this more, I realize that there are a great number of leaders who got there because of their effort to build, maintain, and nurture a huge network of informal relationships. I\u2019ve also seen leaders (including exec level leaders) fail because they thought that their position was enough, and didn\u2019t work to build their network, credibility, and trust.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

– <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I gave a short talk to an internal MS community this week. The topic of the day was \u201cinfluence\u201d, and I thought it was appropriate to talk about the value of building (and maintaining!) an informal network \u2013 and the impact of that network on influence. The advice to have an informal network isn\u2019t new…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}