Your Network, Your Net Worth

It is yet another wonderful Friday and we get to have yet another article. When I dropped an article last week, I did not get much feedback. The only person who gave it, however, was a first time reader who decided to compliment me for writing “like Mark Manson”. That feedback brought in mixed reactions in me and for those of you who know Mark Manson, you can easily understand why. Mark is that kind of guy who is a free spirited writer. He likes to blend some hard truths with some swear words when putting up his articles and the title to one of his bestselling books contains the infamous French word in it. He surely is a guy with skills but with his record of swear words per page he is surely is not someone I would want to be compared to.

Over the past week, I found myself in a couple of discussions that hinged on the importance of having some good social capital both by content of discussion and by the mere fact that the discussions were happening. Chatting with a couple of men of the collar and a few academic high priests (professors are high priests of knowledge according to one Prof Adamson Muula), I got to learn some things that I didn’t know previously and that has gotten me geared towards improving my life in ways I never thought of before. Having been bombarded with so much wisdom, I in the same week found myself sharing some insights about building a network with a couple of buddies of mine and the fact that this whole issue has been on my mind all week had me getting compelled to write an article.

In life, we tend to have a network of people with who we interact on professional, religious and social grounds. These interactions occur at varying frequencies and they have a bearing of what our outcomes in life turn out to be. One man once said that a person is essentially the average of the 5 people he interacts with the most. While that may not be mathematically measurable, the main point is just that we all get influenced by the people with whom we interact more often. This influence entails that we need to be a bit picky with the way we choose the people we talk to and interact with on a daily basis in order to draw inspiration towards the right things.

The general trend among young people is that we tend to be passive about the way we take people into our close networks. We tend to have people hang close to use based on one common ground without screening them for what they have to bring on offer to or take away from us. Needless to say, there has to be a certain level of scrutiny that has to be involved when picking one’s inner circle.

In one of the presentations I attended by arguably one of the best upcoming health researchers in the country, he talked of how having a good network propelled and is still propelling him to greater heights. In his words, he talked of how he had mentors who guided him towards fulfilling his goals at every stage of his career and how he had peers who challenged him to do better. It is from this that I would like to extend the concept of horizontal and vertical dimensions of networking.

As we grow along with our dreams and aspirations of a better life, we need to realize that there are people who have gone before us and enjoyed the things we desire the most. In our workplaces, churches and communities there is no shortage of people with successful careers, families and spiritual lives. While we may have our own ideas on how to perfectly run our lives, sometimes it is worth sitting down under the teaching of those who are doing it and learning a thing or two.

While in the same journey, we also have peers with similar aspirations. These are people with whom we may chat casually or interact by virtue of being in the same profession, workplace, religious entity or community. In the same settings, there are also some who may not be as ambitious and goal oriented. It is important, then to flock with those with whom we can speak the same language of goals, self-development and progress.

I totally understand people who would dispute this line of thought with the dismissive line that there is no single way of living life which anyone has to prescribe. On the other hand, this world operates on principles and those have to be followed to an extent. While we should aim at being unique in our lives, we need to appreciate that lessons from other people’s experiences have the potential to improve our lives when carefully tailored and applied. That being said, it does not mean that learning from superiors should make us lose our ability to make our own decisions.

If you do not buy into this thing of speaking the same language of progress with your peers, you should at least understand that you do not have to wallow in vice and negativity because of your friends either. At the very least, you should have friends who can tell you off whenever you spell out your plans of doing something dodgy.

Allow me to share another view of a person’s inner circle by spelling out the fact that a spouse forms an integral part of such a circle. It therefore, is important to make sure that there is a level of objectivity that is roped in when picking a spouse because being part of the inner circle, he or she is likely to have so much influence on one’s life. A spouse needs to be someone you can plan with in the short, intermediate and long term and one needs to make a good pick in those regards. Again, if you do not buy into this utopian thinking, you should at the very least be someone who can say no to your funny and dodgy plans and actions.

For those of you who feel like you have a bit of wisdom worth sharing, you need to understand the horizontal and vertical dimensions of networking in line with sharing. The vertical dimension entails having superior people to mentor you in your network and the horizontal dimension involves making the right picks for the people in your inner circle (including bae). The vertical dimension, on the other hand also extends downwards with those of us who are able supporting those who greatly need our support.  We need to realize that however small what we have may be, there are people who could benefit from it.

Having written all this with the above title, I found myself wondering whether I had heard this “your network is your net worth” statement. To avoid being called a plagiarist, I looked the statement up and I found out that “Your Network is Your Net Worth” is a book by Porter Gale. Full title? Your Network Is Your Net Worth: Unlock the Hidden Power of Connections for Wealth, Success, and Happiness in the Digital Age. I can't wait to get a copy.

Happy weekend to you all.