Or Canteen, Bistro, Coffee-shop, Corner Kitchen….
As a manager of technologists you get pretty used to your team (and yourself) working out of the office. Home, the beach, client sites, and interstate/overseas trips are all work du jour for today’s Information worker. But any professional worth their salt understands the importance of being in the office too.
This has little to do with company productivity (my experience shows that people tend to work a lot harder away from the office) but individual career benefit. There’s an old (well new, really) adage which states:
Nobody ever got promoted working from home.
Generalisation? Sure! But as with all clichés there’s a nugget of truth in it.
As a representative of your enterprise, it’s in your best interest to exploit, er, facilitate all of your company resources. How do you let the pre-sales guys know you’re ready for a gig? The sales team know your particular expertise? Get the latest technical training plans from the Marketing team? Simple – you build relationships with these people.
Remember though, just as you spot shallow attempts to influence you through fake relationships, others will as well. Enter, the water cooler, or more likely in Australia, the canteen.
Relationships are organic, serendipitous if you will. Yes, there are principles of rapport building, which you should learn and put into practice. But you can’t force relationships, you have to let them build. Having breakfast, coffee, or lunch with others, with no explicit agenda, or outcome apart from building a friendship, forms the oil that lubricates this machinery.
So, make an effort to have a meal everyday with someone outside your department. If you’re offsite, then schedule one day a week to come onsite. Be seen, take people for coffee, listen to the ambient conversation in the building, and let it build your intuition. Be kind, helpful, and discuss personal passions – cycling, diving, bonsai, gadgets (there’s always gadgets). Before long you’ll find you’re the person connecting people across the organisation, adding real value to real projects. After that it’s just a hop, skip, and jump before what you sow is returned. (to horrendously mix metaphors)
What about small businesses?
So what about the start-up developer, or the small business owner? What do they do given the lack of an office canteen? Enter the Coffee Morning.
It’s harder, but imperative, to meet up with other professionals, regularly & socially. Over the last month or so I’ve been frequenting the North Shore Coffee Morning in Mosman. This group started as a Tweetup. It blows me away how much value I get from each meeting. 2 hours there is worth over a day in my office by myself.
Check out how many people frequent this group now. Explosive growth in a couple of months.
I guess other people get value from this too. 
“But I’m too busy…”
Yep. Of course you are. Far too busy to meet people who’re skilled, & competent to outsource those distracting tasks. Too busy to meet your next client, or partner, or business venture.
If you’re a consultant or manager in an enterprise organisation, of course you’re too busy to hear about the large bid that Sales is working on with potential consulting time. Too busy to hear about the free training from a product group, which will likely go to a partner.
I get it. I really do. After all “Tomorrow is a Slower Day.”
“So where can I meet people?”
Well, there’s a host of Twitter originated coffee mornings, like #nscm, which are free to attend, although you’ll likely pay between $5 & $20 depending on whether you have a drink or meal.
There are more formal groups, such as the South African Business Network in Sydney. This is organised over LinkedIn but meets monthly at NSW I&I. Also Sydney Business Swap, which costs $40, and meets weekly at the Grace Hotel in the city. Business Swap focuses more on a featured speaker every week (next week is the CEO of the City of Sydney, Monica Barone) than on networking, hence the covert charge.
If you are technical, and more interested in a Technical Usergroup, there are plenty affiliated to Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, and Open Source*. But note, although these do have significant benefits for consultants, you’re venturing back into your technology comfort zone, rather than stretching to meet people with complementary skills.
But hey, you’re a self-starter, start your own
*Due to the fragmented nature of the Open Source Community (almost by definition) I couldn’t find any coherent, up-to-date directory for OSS UG’s. I’d love to be corrected, so if you have one, please do comment and I’ll update the post
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Roger
Great post. My summary of it is that you can’t underestimate the power of connection. Not just having a coffee or meal with someone once a blue moon but a regular interaction that develops into a mutually beneficial relationship.
I know it’s helped me in my business and consulting career over the past 24 years! Thanks for the reminder and for recommending #nscm – good place to start.
Cheers, Iggy