There are two professional networks you need to manage : the one inside your company, and the one outside your company.
The one inside your company is bascially your co-workers, your reports, and your bosses. Beyond keeping good relationship w/ people you have daily interaction with, there are two other important things :
- Keep an extended network beyond your department / group. The people you interacts daily probably have the same set of information and work towards the same set of goal as you are doing. The people outside of that will have different set of inforamtion that will broden your thinking and allow you think more like your boss since now you are look at things cross multiple groups w/in the company (see the Section about Manage Up).
- Become an expert in your company on something that's not related to your work. For example, if you are a lawyer but you are good at computers, you can be your local expert on how to fix minor issues or what's the hottest gadgets. The point is that you need to give people motivation to come to talk to you, so you can expand your network.
The network inside your company impacts your career daily but on a very small scale on daily basis (like a stream of continous flow). The one outside of your company will be the one that you will not feel any impact for a long time. But when it happens, it usually happens in a big way (like a titlewave or tsunami). There is an interesting study about how people found their new jobs. It turns out that most of people found their job through their network. But it is not through the people they know very well. It is mostly through the people they have not strong relationship with. In one way, it is not surprising, because they people you know well is probably in the same environment as you in, so it is less likely they know opportunities that you do not know about.
May that be big sales opportunity or big career opportunity, it takes a different set of effort to manage your external network. You will put a lot of effort in it, and you should not expect any return for a long time. But when it happens, may that be one single person for 5 minutes, it pays off for all the effort you put in. The key for this network is simply to keep in touch. For example, I keep an Excel sheet about whatever information I learned about my Client. Maybe he mentioned about his birthday one time, or maybe he has a kid who wants to apply to the collega where I graduated from in couple of years. Periodically, I follow-up with them about those things. For example, I would send a birthday card, or I could offer to put in a word for his kid's college applicaiton.
Generally speaking, a person can keep a loose network of 300 to 400 people. Anything beyond that is not manageable. Think about how many people you have in your netowkr, and what you have done recently to keep it current.
