The Myth of MY Network

Posted on January 25th, 2010 by tim bursch. Filed under business, connections, sharing.

Do we own our networks? I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. Now Shannon’s post has me thinking some more.

The old strategy has been and still is for some to collect contacts and keep them to yourself and for your own goals. If you get a new connection for your network it’s a hash mark on your networking scoreboard. The more people in your address book/Rolodex/Blackberry the more successful you should be. The aggressive card collector wins. Swim with the barracudas right?

What about generosity? About 7 years ago I stumbled upon Love is The Killer App by Tim Sanders. It’s the simple concept of sharing your knowledge, your network, and your compassion and it fits with the growing online networks. Simple result: The person who shares the most actually wins.

Here’s the deal, did we ever own our contacts? I hope not. They are real people with their own voice and their own choice. What if we looked at this whole interconnected web of relationships as THE network instead of MY network? Would you hoard? Take? Or how about contribute, invest and then share.

What do you think? Is the network yours or ours?

Image by: cloudzilla

Diane Tran

Great post, Tim. My initial thoughts are that we own our networks about as much as they own us. Is your contact or colleague doing well? If so, if you needed them to come through for you, would they be able to do so in this moment? If not, what are you doing to support that person with their current needs such that they're able to similarly assist you in reaching your goals?

The idea of THE network points to society in general. We are interconnected and for any of us to do well, we all need to recognize our interdependence and to consequently support each other. As the late Senator Wellstone said, "We all do better when we all do better."

timbursch

Diane,
Thank you for sharing. I really like that quote. It seems like there is a balance between making the network better locally and globally. Haiti, Twitter, Minneapolis, and my city block.

jlbraaten

The cliche line "If you love something, let it go and if it was meant to be it'll come back to you" applies here. It's not the size of your network, but the quality. Concentrate on helping people and solving problems to help your networks grow, not by hoarding contacts.