Never Eat Alone

Busy day today. I did not even keep up on my email which is unusual for me. I spoke at a Melcrum Conference on Building a Culture of Employee Engagement. My topic was blogging. Although I felt competent to handle the blogging comment, I felt somewhat inadequate or daunted at speaking at a conference called "Building a Culture of Employee Engagement". Not sure I yet have that formula perfected.

And of course after speaking about blogging, I have to post since they will all be looking at my blog. Big pressure.

Tonight I attended a YPO event where the speaker was Keith Ferrazzi, author of "Never Eat Alone and other secrets to success, one relationship at a time". I was happy to see he is a normal sized person - I thought from all the eating he might be overweight.

The gist of his message is contained in the book title. Form relationships and nurture them to be successful. In he book fortunately he also talks about giving without expectation of return. So he is not all about networking just to "taking". My challenge is relationships take time and choosing how my time is spend is a constant struggle. So I am thinking about a pyramid approach. Some people I email occassionally, others I email and call, others I meet with etc. I used to do this in sales. I would call on certain customers every month and some every 3 months and some only once a year. Over time I learned that short periods of intense contact meant I could maintain the relationship with less contact over time. EG - make 4 sales call in 6 weeks then drop back to just email and calls etc. Good relationships are those without "contact obligations". And of course placement within the pyramid will change in time.

Although one of my strengths is my rolodex and the number people I know and who know me, I am inspired to be more disciplined in my approach.

One comment he made tied into employee engagement. 30% of the people surveyed had a close friend at work and those 30% were seven times as productive as the others. So how to make people be friends.

One of his comments tied into Blink and Hunches that I blogged about yesterday. "we tend to instantly judge people and are immediately screened by other people's prejudices". So first impressions count.