I've always felt that the real title to every book I've written and most of my nationally syndicated columns is Prepare to Win. But I have a fondness for catchier titles, so for my networking book, I went with "Dig Your Well Before You're Thirsty." Bottom line: Networking is all about preparing to win.
In that book, I wrote a chapter about people who should be in your network: doctors, travel agents, bankers, insurance agents, auto mechanics, ticket brokers, recruiters, community and religious leaders, real estate brokers and on and on.
These are all must-haves — especially for me — but one of the areas I later realized that I neglected to cover is connections to cultivate inside the workplace, which are crucial to succeeding in anyone's career. After all, there's a reason we call them connections. You must connect.
That's exactly what I did when I started my career many moons ago at Quality Park Envelope Company. My gut instinct told me that if I could figure out who I could befriend and impress with my business qualities, I would be able to move up in the organization. Sure enough, within a couple of months, I moved from the plant to the sales department.
All it took was for me to do the best I could do, make sure the assistant plant manager knew it, and latch on to a guardian angel — someone who was equally eager to escape the plant and who took me with him when he wrangled his way into sales.
I was beginning to learn the finer points of internal networking. Networking is not a numbers game. The idea is not to see how many people you can meet; the idea is to compile a list of people you can count on.
This was my first exposure to what I later learned was called the sausage theory. When one link moves, the other links follow. I've seen this play out many times over the years. When one person gets a different job in an organization or jumps to a key job at another company, they often bring a lot of their co-workers with them.
Here are some of the co-workers to get to know who can help you move up:
