Grow your network like a garden

My yard has really been blooming lately. Even in mid-summer, which lacks the showiness of April, I love seeing the crepe myrtles, roses, hydrangeas, sunflowers, and lilies.

I also know that all this beauty is nothing close to an accident. The house’s original owners designed quite an elaborate landscape, and while the property has gone through periods of more or less attention, these days we are spending a lot of effort planting, pruning, weeding, and trying to restore patches that have gotten covered in vines. I don’t think there is such a thing as a set-it-and-forget-it garden. But on the other hand, the steady investment of work does pay off in beauty over time.

There’s a close analogy here to a good professional network. Everyone knows that it’s important to “network” (transactional as that word tends to sound). It is also easy in the busy seasons of life to just ignore all this. Who has time to go to that conference? If you tend to manage most of the day-to-day scheduling of your household, it can be doubly hard to leave. Who has time to reach out to former colleagues? You barely talk to your current ones! Doing a favor that requires a few uncertain steps is highly likely to fall down the to-do list. You may be telling yourself you’ll do all this when the busy season of life passes.

But years can pass without the busyness letting up. And then all of a sudden something happens. You need to fill a vital position on your team, or maybe you are looking for a new job, and you’re scrambling to reach out to people who haven’t heard from you in ages.

Better to be intentional about all this watering and pruning.

I think the best approach is to truly make it a habit. Every work day, do something to tend your garden. Put it on your daily to-do list and cross it off. At the end of the week, look at what you’ve done. You can plan things in and you can make a note of whatever comes up that you do.

This doesn’t have to be complicated, but don’t let yourself off too easy either. Liking something on social media isn’t really building a network, but a well-placed comment or direct message to someone about something they posted might be.