26.7.08
A network, I felt this post needed some pizzaz!
The mind-blowing revelation of that aside, the article was pretty decent. They spoke with a company that is mining companies for how work networking really works. The most interesting bit of information was that work networks, and the persons in that network, generally center around one individual, and that person is rarely ever the manager. That's not saying that management is good for nothing, on the contrary, they're saying that usually management is too busy with paperwork and other problems to be able to maintain that intensive connection with the staff.
Another interesting bit was finding out that the best real-life networks are ones where everyone branches out during the day, takes in information and then regroups at the end of the (work) day and shares ideas. They also suggest that getting 2 people in the network who don't know one another together over coffee (or cake! people like cake) can cause a boost in productivity.
After reading the article, I realized that my location does all of these things. We're constantly bringing in others in our network for lunch meetings so we can get to know them and vice-versa. We all have our own different sources, and are very open about sharing these things with one another. In other words, we're doing something right! It feels good to be able to place a reason with a result. Now we know how we can keep building on our successes.
