How to Expand Your Network Beyond Your Work Group
When you’re a full time web worker you work extra-hard to make sure that members of your team can quickly and easily get in touch with you. Making those connections to share ideas, distribute and monitor tasks, and otherwise hobnob amidst your peers is crucial to getting the job done. But if you are not just a contractor, but a real employee, it can be just as important to expand your online social circle to your colleagues outside your immediate work group. How can you transcend the miles to reach out to people with whom you don’t necessarily work every day?
1. Expand instant messaging to all staff, not just the web worker elite. This is good for two reasons: first, you expand the number of people you can casually discuss things with. More importantly, when useful and fun tools are rolled out to more people it reduces the resentment that can arise when some folks telecommute and others just can’t.
2. Make the most of your onsite time. When you do make it into the office, schedule some walk-around-and-visit-time throughout your time in country. Or take on the role of Julie the Cruise Director and schedule some group lunches or a happy hour and invite the whole office.
3. Seek opportunities to reach out to more people. While you wouldn’t want to subvert anyone’s manager’s authority, you can make more contacts within your organization by going directly to the source for an answer, rather than filtering your request through the proper channels.
4. Send updates to everyone, and ask for feedback and ideas. Depending on how integrated your work is in the life of the office, many people may have no idea what you and your team are working on, particularly if they never get a chance to wander by your desk and peep at your screen. So on a routine basis, send a little broadcast email about project progress, and see what interest and ideas those who aren’t directly involved might have.
What other methods do you use build your watercooler network?
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I’m surprised you haven’t mentioned using Social Networking sites like FaceBook & MySpace. These are great places to contact people who are employed by the same organisation. That is of course, if the organisation allow the use of Social Networks?
I agree, I’ve found people on Facebook that I had lost touch with many years ago. And LinkedIn is still growing, I get invites from former clients and co-workers all the time.
Finally is Spock. I signed up quite a while ago and finally got my beta invite – its a search engine geared at finding people. If you really want to connect with someone this looks like a good way to at least find them.
4. Send updates to everyone, and ask for feedback and ideas.
Keeping everyone in the loop makes ideas work better. I have found that the response to and buy in on design ideas is much smoother when everyone on the team has their say before designs have begun.
I’m in the publishing world, so I’ll let our sales people know when we’ve written a story about one of their clients. The client obviously loves it (unless it’s a gripe piece) and more often than not they’ll link to the story on our site.
One of our investees developed something called yuuguu: (http://www.yuuguu.com) specifically to address this issue. It gives you free leightweight cross-platform screensharing and a tool to set up voice conference calls (where they make their money).
Start smoking