PMcrunch

Networking has always been an important activity for everyone - especially professionals on the move.  The fact is, no matter where you want to go, you can probably get there faster, and more efficiently, if you have a good network. Networking can also be a great deal of fun.

Networking today is changing very rapidly due to advancements on the Internet.  In the past few years, “social networking” sites have sprung up and are continuing to grow and expand very rapidly.  These developments beg the question, “What is the value of your network?”

We as human beings have a certain capacity for relationships.  I, for one, have no idea what the limitations of this capacity are, but my hunch is that it is far greater than what humans have experienced in the past.  Years ago, a person could go through their entire life knowing only people in their immediate family, or people in their village, having little knowledge of anyone else.  They most likely had a small number of especially close relationships.  Will the number of our close relationships now grow with social networking?  Or will we simply have a greater number of colleagues and remote acquaintances where previously there were none?  Could it also be, that instead of having a community of hundreds of people that we know well, we will instead have thousands that we know peripherally?

Project management professionals can start by thinking about how their existing network can help them quickly get to where they need to be.  For example, within a company, if you are working on an IT project, it helps to have a network of people related to the applications you are managing.  Build a support network for those applications.  You want people in your network with experience supporting and solving problems specifically related to these applications.  You want people in your network that possess the knowledge to complete these applications with a high degree of quality and expertise.

These days a project team alone is unlikely to be 100% of the knowledge, expertise, and resources needed for the the job.  In today’s world, we aren’t only relying on individual expertise, but also the ability for each individual to reach out to their own network to get answers quickly and rapidly complete tasks.

Thinking this way presents project management professionals with an opportunity to gain a great deal, right now, through their participation in social networking.  Not only can one derive some immediate benefit through social networking participation but they will also be up to speed as this area unfolds and continues to evolve.  Sociologists, Psychologists, and more are studying the social networking phenomenon today.  The whole universe of social networking is still being “figured out.”  We are all trying to determine what the true value of social network is, and exactly how social networking can help each of us optimize our activities, optimize our actions, and achieve our goals faster and more efficiently than ever before.

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John Reiling, PMP
Project Management Training Online
Tech Training Online