Quick update & some new thoughts

I am back; it’s been a week without blogging. Since I am only in the Netherlands for a few more weeks I have been rounding of as much business as possible. This mostly meant scheduling meeting after meeting with not much time in between to stay online. I realized an advantage in this and on my way home in the train last week (after three consecutive meetings) I wrote down my thoughts.

I am sitting in the train on my way home. I had one of those days where I had scheduled lots of meetings in one day. I prefer this.

The most valuable reason why you would do this is the transferability of knowledge. With every meeting you learn something new, you become more update and most likely if you’re working across a specific industry the people you meet are interconnected.

When you schedule all these meetings after one another you’ll find yourself bringing new found knowledge to the next meeting. It’s hard to illustrate, I say give it a shot, put all your (related) meetings on one day in the week.

Don’t have a one dimensional network but have a multi dimensional network where you can make the links between your connections and their mutual affiliations, it brings a new dimension to your networking efforts.  Be aware of the possible links in your network and start connecting people with one another. In this manner you can interlink your network and increase its value. However do be careful with becoming the guy who makes introductions for everyone. Every introduction is a reflection upon you.

Right now this is a stub and that means I will take down this post when I have the time and turn it into a mini-essay. I would love your input in the comments.

August 5, 2008 | Filed Under For the Moment 

Comments

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    It's an interesting way to intertwine the connections, but doesn't such an approach short-change the connections in the earlier meetings? If the enhancement comes from the progression, maybe you need to schedule a second meeting with the first group at the end of the day!

    Interesting thoughts.
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    I like the idea: accretion of knowledge over a days' worth of meetings; that increases the value you can provide to the remainder of the people you'll be meeting with later in the day. Smart!
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    Quite an interesting idea to put all your meetings in one day, but i'd say this system only really works if the meetings have something in common. I don't think it would be good if you had meetings about different projects on one day. So you create a monolith meeting day around one project, that seems interesting.

    But, I often go out to eat or have a drink after the meeting, with those people. Sometimes we skip the meeting and the bar or restaurant is an even better place to be productive. (no charts! win win!) Your system is more formal in that aspect.

    My view has always been that meetings are basically pointless unless you give them value. And that can be done by knowledge, decisions made there and then, new information and most of all, as you mention, networking with the people you spend time with, you do business with. So to me, less formal is more productive.
 
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