Over the past few months I have had the opportunity to see that 6 degrees of separation are more likely 2 or 3 in today's business environment! Below are some anecdotal accounts of just how small the world is, and how powerful networking is!
A friend of mine is looking to fill a C-level position in Hong Kong, which I proceeded to post it within the IERG networking group (a New York based networking group of C-level execs). The opportunity was posted on one Wednesday evening and the following morning I received an email from a gentleman in Hong Kong whom I had met at a social gathering in December. So, overnight, the email had traveled from NY, on to someone in London, who passed it on to someone in Hong Kong who sent it on to the person I had met in December in Hong Kong. It is really amazing that the email went around the world overnight, through 4 people and wounded up with a person I had already met!
In a three other cases over the past 6 months, the LinkedIn network has also been a very powerful tool. I was looking to make connections with senior executives within certain companies in the Greater China region (two of these for business development purposes and one for market research reasons). After going to the company web sites, I searched for the companies on Linked-In and was presented with a list of current employees who are registered on LinkedIn. In all three cases, I was only one person removed from my target individual. Once you find the common connection between yourself and the target individual, the "Get introduced through connection" option provides you the ability to write a note to your connection AND a separate note to the target individual. Once your connection agreements (accepts) to make the introduction, the note you wrote to the target individual is automatically sent, indicating that you have been referred by your common connection, creating a warm introduction.
Lessons to be learned? It is a VERY small world in which you should be conscious of what you say, to what and how … because you never know how that may come back to you in the future. The other extremely important takeaway is just how valuable networks are, both online and offline.
Happy networking!