five arrows pointing to success

1

Contents 03 Introduction 05 The hyper-connected world 07 Inner entrepreneurs 08 Face-to-face in a Facebook world 11 Collaborating competitively 13 The stiletto network versus the old boy network 14 Conclusion 15 New skills for new times: Five arrows pointing to success 16 About the author, Editorial Intelligence and acknowledgements 17 Recommended reading

2

Professional connectivity and networking Networking is often seen as a distinct activity, where business cards are exchanged and hands are shaken. In reality, it’s something we all do, every day, with our friends, colleagues, clients and acquaintances. At its most basic level, networking is about forming and maintaining relationships. At EY we believe this “soft” skill is a “core skill”. As a connected and integrated organisation, we see the power that comes from strong global networks. And these networks are a crucial part of our commitment to building a better working world for our people, our clients and the communities we operate in. For us, a better working world is a connected one. So what do connections mean in a digital world? How best are relationships formed? And how can women particularly benefit from them as the gender debate continues in the workplace? We asked Julia Hobsbawm, founder of the knowledge networking business Editorial Intelligence and a visiting Professor in Networking at the London Cass Business School, to provide her views on what working and networking will look like in our near future. Her paper, we hope, will be a timely and thought provoking start to an important debate.

Liz Bingham EY Managing Partner, Talent — UK & Ireland

Fully Connected: A look ahead to working and networking in 2020

3

Introduction In the thirty years since I began my working life, plenty has changed in ‘the office’. In a small book publishing house in London in 1984, there were in-trays, typewriters and telex. The telephone was a landline and when I was at work I tended to sit in isolation at a desk. The telex was the first piece of technology I touched. It was a far cry from Twitter. If I thought about networks at all, I thought about bundles of cables under the sea, and I saw no relationship between the way information was carried by technology and how it might affect me in my daily working life to the extent it does today.

“Everything we do is defined by networks and indeed by networking, in person, online, and organisationally.”

I certainly did not regard the word ‘network’ as having any kind of verb attached to it, to think of myself as an active do-er, a ‘networker’. Networking did exist thirty years ago, but it was rather a male dominated activity at work, with the ‘Mad Men’ image of ‘the long lunch’ or the golf club. Networking was largely elite and self-serving: you networked to get up the corporate ladder, you did not network to collaborate or share. Remember the bowler hat? All sorts of uniforms, real and metaphorical, dominated the working world, where the professional and personal self was supposed to be very separate. Today is the era, at work, of a far more blended self. Today, we still ‘go to work’, and many aspects and kinds of work still look and feel the same but with a crucial difference. We are completely embedded in networks now. The ‘networked self’1 did not fully begin until the beginning of this century. The notion that during office hours someone would communicate en masse with critics and competitors on the same mediums used for personal exchanges as corporate people do today on Twitter or Facebook was as incomprehensible to my generation of early workers as the lack of social media and technology is to anyone in their teens and twenties today. We may all still be workers but we are something else too: networkers in a network age. Networking today is about the permanent exchange of bits of knowledge, of intelligence, of creating and maintaining circles of confidantes and connections who can help us get to the holy grail of successful work: enjoyable productivity. Networking is about knowledge and the more equally that knowledge is distributed, the more we see success. The purpose of this paper is to look towards the year 2020 and see how the workforce of today, especially the newcomers to it, can best prepare for the changes sweeping through culture and technology in working life. Everything we do is defined by networks and indeed by networking, in person, online, and organisationally. Professional workers operate in a global economy dominated by the early aftermath of what the social scientists Barry Wellman and Lee Raine call ‘The Triple Revolution’2 — the arrival of social networks, the internet, and mobile. The age of the desk-based office silo is transforming. Over a billion people — a third of the world’s workforce — is mobile, using mobile technology some or all of the time3 and with it our ways of working — and of networking — need to adapt and to modernise.

1 Barry Wellman, Physical Place and Cyber Place: The Rise of Networked Individualism. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 2001; 25 (2): 227–52 2 Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman, Networked: The New Social Operating System. MIT Press, Cambridge, 2012 3 Amalia Agathou, More than one billion mobile workers worldwide by 2010. The Next Web, February 2010. Available at: thenextweb. com/mobile/2010/02/21/billion-mobileworkers-worldwide-2010/


It is no surprise to learn that human capital is a priority for most corporate leaders: in one recent report4 from The Conference Board, an executive research organisation, it was seen as the number one challenge in Asia and Europe. In a separate survey of nearly 800 HR leaders in 24 countries5 , 80% were reported to believe that their employees have to learn more and learn faster to succeed in their role than they did five years ago and that their recruits are under pressure to adapt fast and develop their skills to meet changes in their markets, demands from their customers and the innovation of their rivals.

4

“80% of HR leaders believe that their employees have to learn more and learn faster to succeed in their role than they did five years ago.”

We connect to each other all the time, but do we have the right skills, the right mindset, and the right time management skills to fully connect to technology on networks but also to the ways of working as networkers? Are we prepared to be fully connected because, as the sociologist Randall Collins puts it: “ideas do not arise in isolated individual minds and are instead found, developed and contested in networks of thinkers.”6 In this paper I outline five key challenges presented by the network age and end with five key practices for navigating and curating our way through the tsunami of information and opportunity presented by it. The tips of these “five arrows” can immediately be put into practice, although I would welcome a longer conversation as the Fully Connected discussion has really only just begun.

4 The Conference Board: CEO Challenge 2013, Summary Report: Countering the Global Slowdown, Optimising Talent and Operational Performance to create competitive advantage 2013 5 Agile Learning: Living with the Speed of Change — A Global Research Report from Lumesse, 2012. Available at: www.lumesse.com 6 The Top 100 Global Thought Leaders. GDI Impuls, Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute, 2013. Available at: www.gdi.ch/de/Think-Tank/ Trend-News/Detail-Page/The-global-thoughtleaders-2013


5

The hyper-connected world “Hyperconnectivity is the increasing digital interconnection of people — and things — anytime and anyplace. By 2020 there will be 50 billion networked devices — such connectivity will increasingly be part of our everyday life, from cars we drive, pills we take, clothes we wear and media we consume to how we work and how countries are governed.” World Economic Forum7

The twenty first century is barely into its teens itself but already, like most teenage years, it is defined by turbulence and change. The speed and pace of change at this time is, by common consent, extraordinary and defined by one word: connection. People and machines are entwined with each other as never before. Speed and scale and complexity now dominate in unprecedented ways as the marketing campaign below illustrates.

“Thanks for being one of the early users and supporters of Hachi. In the last few months, we have significantly improved our algorithms, so that you can leverage the power of your multiple social and professional networks in a much smarter way. You can now search for over 300,000 business decision makers, and find 22 billion connection paths to reach out to them.” e-campaign from Rachna Singh, Founder and CEO of Social Network Hachi

There has been a more than 500% increase in internet usage around the world since the year 20008. Only those born after the turn of the century really keep up with the multidimensional rapidity of it all. Perhaps however, like the young century, teenagers could do with a little wisdom that only age can bring, namely there are only so many hours in a day. Time poverty haunts the professional working classes, even as they know how lucky they are in the context of a global economy.

“Networking is a crucial part of diplomacy.” Matthew Rycroft, COO, Foreign & Commonwealth Office

Governments around the world have had a rude awakening to hyperconnectivity: as a logistical exercise it is staggering how much information has had to be made publicly available online in multiple formats in the last handful of years alone. The challenge is to keep pace with both slow and fast methods of communications. Matthew Rycroft, Chief Operating Officer at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office based in London, told me9: “The FCO and our network of 270 Embassies, Consulates and Trade Offices around the world rely on our staff to promote UK interests. To do their jobs effectively those staff rely on networks of contacts to get under the skin of a country or region or issue. In our interconnected world, the FCO needs, and has, staff with deep expertise, language skills, and the ability to forge relationships with people of influence. So networking is a crucial part of diplomacy.” 7 Hyperconnected World, World Economic Forum. Available at: www.weforum.org/issues/ hyperconnected-world 8 Usage and Population Statistics. Available at: www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm 9 Comment provided by Matthew Rycroft, Chief Operating Office, Foreign & Commonwealth Office, London, March 2014


He is talking about something far older than the internet: relationships. Don Tapscott, Adjunct Professor at the Rotman School of Management and one of the top five management thinkers globally,10 agrees: as he told me for this report:11 “In the new business environment, the ability, to accumulate and gain leveraged returns on relationship capital plays a key role in driving business performance and shareholder value.” In a world which thinks nothing of inviting you to connect to billions of others electronically12 there is anxiety about how to fit everything in when our body clocks and calendars do not stretch beyond a paltry 168 hours total per week. Most of us need to sleep for a third of it — leaving little more than 100 hours over seven days in which to live, to dress, to travel, to eat, to have social interaction with family and friends — and in which to work.

A key challenge in the modern, hyperconnected workplace is to know how in practice to make the time to do this, whilst dealing with a blizzard of emails, a torrent of data, and a full Outlook calendar. Inbox management joins time management as a key skill to acquire. How to manage hyperconnectivity often involves counterintuitively tuning out from it. I often advise my corporate students to ‘unplug’13 at least one full day in seven, and certainly to create space in the day from being at the mercy of the inbox.

6

“How to manage hyperconnectivity often involves counterintuitively tuning out from it.”

10 Thinkers’50. Available at: www.thinkers50. com/about/ 11 Don Tapscott, interviewed by the author for this report, February 2014 12 Received by subscribers to social network Hachi, March 2014. Available at: www.gohachi.com 13 Sabbath Manifesto. Available at: www.sabbathmanifesto.org/unplug/


7

Inner entrepreneurs “When he came home at night to his children, he may have been tired and poor and overwhelmed, but he was alive. He was his own boss… a lesson crucial to those who wanted to tackle the upper reaches of a profession like law or medicine: if you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires.” Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

There is no certainty in the modern global economy. Every professional worker is shadow boxing an invisible competitor in another time zone and almost every industry can face ‘disruptive innovation’, what The Economist calls: “wild and disruptive technological breakthroughs that require corporations to radically rethink their very existence”14 at any time. Being agile, nimble, self-reliant are the skills to have and they most resemble the skills not of the traditional manager but of the entrepreneur.

networks. High performer employees often maintain memberships in multiple professional or technical communities, enabling them to translate values and move knowledge across various organizational boundaries.”15

“Being agile, nimble, self-reliant are the skills to have and they most resemble the skills not of the traditional manager but of the entrepreneur.”

Diet to lifestyle approach Think of it in terms of fitness. With food and exercise, the prevailing culture has moved from a ‘diet’ mentality to ‘lifestyle’ in order to make sustained changes. No one thinks a healthy lifestyle has a quick fix solution, and everyone now believes it has to be embedded behaviour. The same will happen with knowledge fitness and intelligence. As Gemma Lines, Head of Resourcing, Citi, EMEA put it to me in an interview for this whitepaper:

Making your own luck Those who make up the generation who expect to be in positions of senior leadership by 2020 are going to have to make their own luck managing their networks and sources of knowledge whilst getting the increasingly time pressured day job done. Indeed, having “Behaviours and competencies of the past the entrepreneurial spirit of risk and flexibility, are going to have to change... we are looking of relying mostly on your own resources for people who have curiosity and a global whilst using those at your disposal, is going outlook — people whose networks are wide, to be key. who understand that networking is the This is a challenge for many who have acquisition of knowledge and ideas, and recently entered or are about to enter the whose knowledge is not just specialist but workplace, who can feel that their education spans many disciplines. Our top people need and work experience to date ‘should be to understand complexity and dilemma, and enough’. It isn’t, and knowledge networking this requires many perspectives... this is an integral part of keeping up to date and requires an appetite for change, and a wide up to speed, as an article in MIT Sloan open mind... tenacity and emotional literacy, Management Review makes clear: “Early in adaptability which I sum up in one word: their employment in organisations, high resilience.”16 performers invest in, develop and renew high-quality network relationships. These personal relationships help them extend their expertise and avoid learning biases by tapping into pockets of knowledge and accessing valuable resources across their

14 Tim Hindle, Disruptive technology and innovation. Economist, 2009. Available at: www.economist.com/node/13636558 15 Margaret Schweer, Dimitrius Assimakopoulos, Robert J Thomas, Building a well-networked organisation. Sloan Management Review, Winter 2012. Available at: sloanreview.mit.edu/article/building-a-wellnetworked-organization/ 16 Interview with Gemma Lines, Head of Resources, EMEA, Citigroup, February 2014


8

Face-to-face in a Facebook age “If you’re an extrovert, use your skills to bumble-bee around parties, but when you meet someone that you have real chemistry with, take time to get to know them and set up a one-on-one coffee date in the near future. Without these more personal and intimate exchanges later, the connections you make won’t take hold. If you’re an introvert, embrace your solo zen power sessions and know that crazy frenetic party environments can and do lead to hangouts that are more your speed.” Jessica Hische, blogger17

Given how much time people spend online or outsourced or completely replicated by being hyperconnected, it is slightly surprising technology even if it comes in handy that they get together face-to-face at all. sometimes. As the writer Will Self remarked, But, in the decade since social media has no one is suggesting that people start to become dominant, mass scale ‘live’ events “parent their children by Skype.”18 such as Ted and Tedx conferences, Perhaps it is because face-to-face connection Glastonbury and the Hay Festival for takes in at least four of our five senses in one Literature have all thrived. Why? Because in go: sight, sound, smell and touch (the the sea of digital overload, people crave welcome handshake or kiss on one or both human connection, either one-to-one, or cheeks). If you count the ritual social one-to-many. Randi Zuckerberg, sister of consumption food and drink in meetings then Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg, perhaps taste can be included too. recently emailed her followers on her way back from the annual South by Southwest In his book Writing on the Wall: Social Media (SXSW) conference to say: — the first 2,000 years19 the journalist Tom Standage writes about the embodiment of a “Even tech people still need to connect faceknowledge networking environment which is to-face. Despite all the stories of friendships four centuries old, describing ‘The Coffee formed through social media conversations House’, first imported into Europe in the and support groups, nothing can replace the seventeenth century, he explains: “Whatever human connection that comes from meeting the topic, the main business of coffee houses in person.” was the sharing and discussion of news and Hierarchy of communication opinion in spoken, written, and printed The ability to connect with another human, form... conversation between strangers was to develop trust, understanding, faith, belief, encouraged, and distinctions of class and and a relationship — all drivers of both human status were to be left at the door.” capital and social capital — happen best faceAlthough modern culture is dominated by to-face. There is a hierarchy of communication. coffee shops where people tend not to Social media comes in third, below written congregate to talk and knowledge network, communication, and below that which you it may only be a matter of time before they can have in person, although of course there do. The coffee house chain which introduces are different uses for different mediums at strangers to each other and encourages different times. But in terms of relationship connection may be on to something. If the building, and observing and managing the social neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman, development of relationships, face-to-face is right that “we are hard wired to connect”20 comes out top and cannot really be and the sociologist Mark Granovetter’s

“Even tech people still need to connect face-to-face. Despite all the stories of friendships formed through social media conversations and support groups, nothing can replace the human connection that comes from meeting in person.” Randi Zuckerberg

17 Jessica Hische, Non-creepy networking: Party Etiquette. Available at: jessicahische.is/ 18 Will Self comment in Spectator Debate, London, March 2014 19 Tom Standage, Writing on the Wall: Social Media — the first 2,000 Years. Bloomsbury, London, 2013 20 Matthew Lieberman, Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect. Oxford University Press, 2014


seminal findings from over forty years ago on The Strength of Weak Ties 21 show that people can make all sorts of valuable and rewarding connections from unlikely sources, then it tells us two things: firstly, we need to connect more face-to-face than less; and secondly, to do so in more innovative ways. Perhaps this is why MIT Sloan Management Review noted that: “Many companies send their employees off to make connections with a slap on the back and nothing else, and then managers wonder why employees often fall into familiar traps, such as relying on a narrow spectrum of people who are at their same level, from the same department or country, or whom they happen to like. High-performing employees, by contrast, routinely avoid such traps. Instead of allowing their networks to lean in one direction, high performers intentionally build connections with the goal of boosting their performance.”22 Givers and takers The organisational psychologist Professor Adam Grant, of the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, picks up this theme in his book Give and Take by noting that generosity and reciprocity in networking, and being a ‘Giver’ not a ‘Taker’ is central to success in a new world where… ”being a giver doesn’t require extraordinary acts of sacrifice. It just involves a focus on acting in the interests of others, such as by giving help, providing mentoring,sharing credit, or making connections for others”.23

Time poverty But, there are obstacles to doing more face-to-face connecting in a Facebook age. The first, covered earlier regarding hyperconnectivity, is time poverty. It definitely takes more time to arrange to meet someone, to do so, to follow-up in some shape or form, than it does to massmail them or post something up on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter to many people at once.

9

“Even high achieving, apparently extrovert people find it difficult to get into the habit of initiating face-to-face encounters, often using time poverty as an avoidant excuse.”

I have also found that shyness is often a bigger obstacle than time. The Facebook age has made it more comfortable — and comforting — to be behind a screen. Even high achieving, apparently extrovert people find it difficult to get into the habit of initiating face-to-face encounters, often using time poverty as an avoidant excuse. A big culprit is the conference and the cocktail party which have always been seen as ‘great’ networking opportunities but, if they are not curated in any way, can be deeply stressful for people. The biggest mistake people make is to think that it ought to be a comfortable experience, and that they are somehow failing (uniquely) to enjoy or engage the initial moment of ‘entry’ into an unfamiliar setting. I developed some specific techniques for corporate students to help them manage anxiety and discomfort in this setting, but the number one piece of advice is to concentrate on connecting with someone by looking into their face and to worry less about exchanging business cards than exchanging meaningful conversation. It is also why I advocate a higher ratio of oneto-one meetings than one-to-many settings in any given week or month: people are more likely to come away from a cup of coffee feeling satisfied that they have learned something and made a real connection, than they are walking into a room full of strangers — especially if they are in the same subject silo as each other.

21 Mark Granovetter, The Strength of Weak Ties. American Journal of Sociology. 1973; (6) 1360–1380 22 Margaret Schweer, Dimitrius Assimakopoulos, Robert J Thomas, Building a well-networked organisation. Sloan Management Review, Winter 2012. Available at: sloanreview.mit.edu/article/building-a-wellnetworked-organization/ 23 Adam Grant, Give & Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success. Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London, 2013


Welcome to LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network with 250 million members in over 200 countries and territories aroundthe globe. LinkedIn.com

In 2013, Social Work Today magazine looked at the impact on interpersonal communication of new technology, and Paul Booth, PhD, an assistant professor of media and cinema studies in the College of Communication at DePaul University in Chicago, was quoted as saying: “There has been a shift in the way we communicate; rather than face-to-face interaction, we’re tending to prefer mediated communication. We’d rather email than meet; we’d rather text than talk on the phone.”24

10

“We’d rather email than meet; we’d rather text than talk on the phone.” Paul Booth, DePaul University

Smaller is better than bigger Another issue for people is that with so much digital reach through hyperconnectivity, they almost don’t see the point of small groups of connections. Why, when social media trumpets its vast scale and reach, should we be looking at downsizing our connection ambitions? I tend to think a good practical benchmark for managing any kind of connection is Dunbar’s Number25, the anthropologically proven cognitive limit of social connections which is much smaller than you might think: a mere 150. So give me the coffee house over the conference, the water cooler over the cocktail party: the hierarchy of communication is clear, but inhibition, time and managing expectation all remain big challenges to becoming fully connected face-to-face in a Facebook age.

24 Paul Booth, PhD, an assistant professor of media and cinema studies in the College of Communication at DePaul University in Chicago quoted in Social Work Today magazine 25 Robin Dunbar, How Many Friends Does One Person Need?: Dunbar’s Number and Other Evolutionary Quirks — Faber & Faber, London, 2011


11

Collaborating competitively “Under bureaucracy, knowledge is treated as a resource, and is therefore concentrated, along with the corresponding decision rights, in specialised functional units and at higher levels of the organisation. However, in organisations that are competing primarily on their ability to respond and innovate, knowledge from all parts of the organisation is crucial for success, and often subordinates know more than their superiors.” Charles Heckscher and Paul Adler, Towards Collaborative Community26

The Inner Entrepreneur inside the new, agile, resilient, successful workplace of 2020 will also operate alongside a new set of values: collaboration, not competition, with colleagues and indeed with competitors. This is more than team-building and bonding; this is about creativity and productivity. Lynda Gratton, London Business School’s Professor of Management Practice, talks of “the shift from isolated competitor to innovative connector,” noting that “one of the great paradoxes of the future of work will be to simultaneously be a unique specialist and master, capable of standing out from the crowd, while at the same time being intimately connected to the crowd.” 27 Social capital This amounts to a new value being placed on social capital which is “the pattern and intensity of networks amongst people... associated with better health, higher educational achievement, better employment outcomes, and lower crime rates” 28. As Matthew Lieberman of the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of California points out: “If you take a moment to think it through the benefits of social connection in terms of productivity are self-evident... social connection is a resource in the same way that intelligence or the Internet are resources. They facilitate getting done what needs doing.” 30

The innovation expert Don Tapscott, who sits on the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council of Informed Societies with me, pointed out that: “Increasingly a company’s value will be based less on the resources within its corporate walls, and more and more on the relationships the company is able to establish with its customers, suppliers and even competitors... Investors calculating the value of a company will have to devise new yardsticks to measure this so-called “relationship capital... “ 29

“Increasingly a company’s value will be based less on the resources within its corporate walls, and more and more on the relationships the company is able to establish with its customers, suppliers and even competitors.” Don Tapscott, World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council of Informed Societies

It is interesting that words like ‘relationship’ and ‘social’ are moving into the hard workplace, softening its edges: even though the business world remains competitive — and the global economy is becoming more, not less, competitive, knowledge networking and the softer skills of connection are becoming crucial to success. This is all a far cry from the silo mentality which has dominated corporate culture and thinking and its practice of knowledge networking until now. Networking has been seen as the preserve of the senior players who have control over their time and who can be ‘trusted’ to spend it productively. With the benefits of networking collaboratively being understood so much more, it can only be a matter of time before these practices of investing in relationships and building social capital gain traction far more widely inside organisations. Networking helps at every level, and should be done at every level.

26 Charles Heckscher and Paul Adler, ’Towards a Collaborative Community’ in The Firm as a Collaborative Community. Oxford University Press, New York, 2006 27 Lynda Gratton, The Shift: The Future of Work is Already Here. London, Collins, 2011 28 Office for National Statistics: Guide to Social Capital. Available at: www.ons.gov.uk/ ons/guide-method/user-guidance/socialcapital-guide/the-social-capital-project/guideto-social-capital.html 29 Interview with Don Tapscott, February 2014 30 Matthew Lieberman in Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014


The value of being able to network and collaborate with colleagues is now being directly linked to productivity. Lieberman quotes a study showing that “individual intelligence may only be optimised when it is enhanced through social connections to others in a group.” 31

Flexibilism A final thought on collaborative working in a competitive environment concerns flexible working and what I have called “Flexibilism.” 34 The new agility in a hyperconnected, hypermobile workplace also requires innovative thinking not just about how people connect and collaborate, but where and when. Clearly, there is a desire to introduce flexible working further into the corporate mix, as the UK government’s Department for Business & Skills’ Employment Relations Minister Jenny Willott MP, commented for this paper: 35

12

“Individual intelligence may only be optimised when it is enhanced through social connections to others in a group.”

Anyone who still prefers the old model of competing with your own colleagues to get ahead should heed the paper published by MIT Sloan Management Review, which noted that “Employees who score low on both individual performance and network contributions fall into the category we call ‘marginalised talent’. Included in this segment “The government is committed to making our are low performers, technical experts and workplaces fit for the 21st Century. young professionals who are bent on proving Increasingly, we see employers embracing their brilliance but who don’t realise they technological changes and recognising the need to collaborate and build effective positive impact that working flexibly can personal networks inside and outside their have on productivity and success. organization.” 32 Employees too are looking for companies that allow them to balance the way they And as with hyperconnectivity, the work. This is why we are extending the right government also needs to meet the to request flexible working to all employees challenges of the new world of collaboration. from June this year. We want these reforms Robert Madelin, the European Commission’s to bring about a culture change in Britain’s Director General, Communications Networks, workplaces, allowing everyone to embrace Content and Technology elaborated on this new ways of working that work for them and idea, telling me for this report: their employers.” “Government is a platform for the co-creation of a vision for change in society, and then for assembling the knowledge, partnerships and game-plans to deliver the vision. Networks and networking — the active, participatory element of work — has never been more critical to joined-up thinking.” 33

31 A Greve, M.Benassi and A.D. Sti International Review of Sociology: Exploring the contributions of human and social capital to productivity, cited by Matthew Lieberman in Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014 32 Margaret Schweer, Dimitrius Assimakopoulos, Robert J Thomas, Building a well-networked organization. Sloan Management Review, Winter 2012. Available at: sloanreview.mit.edu/article/building-a-wellnetworked-organization/ 33 Interview with Robert Madelin, March 2014 34 Julia Hobsbawm, A New ‘Ism’ — Time to Embrace Flexibilism in the Workplace. The Guardian, February 2009. Available at: www.theguardian.com/money/2009/feb/14/ work-life-balance-flexible-working 35 Quote supplied by Jenny Willott MP, Minister for Employment Relations and Consumer Affairs, Department for Business & Skills, March 2014


13

The stiletto network and the old boy network “Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? ‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells Pumping in my living room.” Maya Angelou, Still I Rise

One of the key changes sweeping through the global workforce is the influx of women and the newfound power in their voice. As the World Economic Forum notes:

Interestingly, all of the trends I have described earlier in this paper — of the shift towards a more personal, connected, collaborative, intimate way of working, are traits and qualities that many would “Capital is no longer the only decisive factor associate with women. I certainly think that of production in today’s global economy: the mental shift to combining what you feel a business or an economy’s competitive personally with how you connect and advantage is increasingly determined by communicate professionally is less innovative ideas or services, and is less problematic for people comfortable with dependent on tangible assets. We are rapidly confiding and talking, be they men or moving from capitalism to ‘talentism’. In such women. For me this is less about leadership a world, gender parity can no longer be — although we still need far more women treated as superfluous. Women make up a leaders in business and government around half of potential human capital available in the world than we have — and far more about any economy. The efficient use of this talent meaningful working lives which achieve 36 pool is a key driver of competitiveness.” productive goals for all concerned. Knowledge networking is not only vertical, to The phrase ‘Old Boy Network’ means move up the career ladder. It is also lateral, much more than all-male gatherings of ensuring everyone can connect meaningfully course, but it does nevertheless capture with each other and the job at hand. the sense of an outdated era in which small elite cliques dominated a landscape — one Women are arguably now leading the way which women are challenging and beginning in creating new forms of networking at work to claim. which turn out to be matching men at their game of being able to connect and The publication of Sheryl Sandberg’s collaborate face-to-face, building trusted groundbreaking book Lean In in 2013 and relationships and knowledge networks over the subsequent creation of over 14,000 time. Perhaps this is because many women ’Lean in Circles’ groups of female peer face the much debated issues of childbirth, networks around the world, 37 has ushered childcare and career disruption and want to in a new era — also characterised by the socalled ‘Stiletto Network’ 38 which sees women innovate on their terms. place networking front and centre in their This is excellent news for the workplace of drive for greater equality in the workforce. 2020 because ultimately women and men

“Women make up a half of potential human capital available in any economy. The efficient use of this talent pool is a key driver of competitiveness.” World Economic Forum

36 Women Leaders and Gender Parity, World Economic Forum. Available at: www.weforum.org/women-leaders-andgender-parity 37 leanin.org/circles 38 Jacqui Kenyon, How Stiletto Networks Are Blazing the Business World. Forbes, May 2013. Available at: www.forbes.com/sites/ learnvest/2013/05/16/how-stiletto-networksare-blazing-the-business-world/


have the same needs as each other in work, not separate agendas. There will always be — and should always be — diversity celebrated in the workplace. But the challenge now is to see Stiletto Network enter the Old Boy Network — and vice versa. The age of collaboration should not be gender specific, any more than it should include or exclude any specific groups over and above another: inclusion and collaboration go hand in hand. As Liz Bingham, Managing Partner at EY, UK and Ireland says:

“As a society, I’d like us to get to a point where women’s only networks are no longer needed and initiatives like the 30% Club are going to help us get there. However, we aren’t there yet and I believe there’s still a compelling need for networking opportunities for women that still needs to be addressed. The fact that EY’s Women’s Network has over 3,000 members across the UK is testament to this, as is the fact that the average FTSE board has only 20% female representation.”

Conclusion Without networks and without networking, we are all isolated and our ability to deliver and communicate, to connect at all — is restricted. We are no longer passively on networks — we have become networks and we are all now active networkers, at work perhaps more than anywhere else. But, we should remain firmly in control of the technology we use to stay connected, to take the full benefits. To be fully connected we need to remain conscious of how many hours there really are in a day and how many (or how few) people it really takes to have a cup of coffee with to develop successful relationships and take away key knowledge. I look forward to your hearing your comments. @juliahobsbawm [email protected]

14


15

New skills for new times: five arrows pointing to success “We are at the forefront of a whole new world of connectivity, and understanding how to navigate that requires people who can network, collaborate, and think creatively. They also want to embrace change, rather than shy away from it.” William Eccleshare, CEO, Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc

In the nineteenth century, founder of the Rothschild banking and philanthropy empire Mayer Amschel Rothschild,39 sent his five sons out into the world to network their way into prosperity and global connectivity. The symbol of their endeavour became a series of images and symbols depicting five arrows. The Rothschild family and philosophy are a good focal point, as is the image of five arrows — each with a key ‘tip’ to end with regarding the principles and practices of knowledge networking. These need to become embedded in the heart of every workplace by 2020 if these workplaces are to be Fully Connected. • Manage your networks Remember Dunbar’s Number and create a group of 150 people you know who you will connect or reconnect with and actively manage them on a single system: this means reviewing all your disparate systems, from internal intranets to social media and creating a single group. You can then sub-divide that into three: the essential people you currently must keep up with; those you wish to reconnect with or maintain relationships with; and those who you should get to know: your connection targets. • Face-to-face five times a week Remember the ‘hierarchy of communication’: the more face-to-face and voice-to-voice you can manage, the better. You should set a reasonable but ambitious target to measure your results. Again, in terms of meeting people for a cup of coffee or lunch, up to five times a week should be achievable but each person and their schedule obviously varies: sometimes being out for a whole morning or afternoon/evening is better. Remember that small change leads to big change: making any kind of increase is good. Learn to overcome shyness and to connect in a spirit of sharing, not selling.

• Knowledge dashboard Create a list, literally, of sources of information you should be across and make a plan to stay on top of it. Make sure you have a balance between on and offline publications, audio, television or YouTube across areas such as ‘news & views,’ ‘specialist interest’ and ‘zeitgeist.’ Remember: the more you can show your intelligence to others, the easier it becomes to build relationships and the stronger your social capital. • The active networker (lifestyle not diet) Think of knowledge networking in terms of physical fitness, and in terms of a marathon, not a sprint. Spend at least 1/5 of your working time — at least 8-10 hours — a week on a combination of face-to-face connection, organising your networks, and creating your ‘knowledge dashboard’ of issues and ideas to be across. • Curiosity & generosity This is the age of collaboration and reciprocity. Share what you know with others: send a link you have read, order a book and put it in the mail, help someone who looks like they are having an attack of shyness across the corner of a cocktail party room. Above all, be interested in ideas and others, not just yourself.

39 Five Arrows, The Rothschild Archive. Available at: www.rothschildarchive.org/ ib/?doc=/ib/articles/data_faq_5arrow


16

About the author and Editorial Intelligence Julia Hobsbawm’s career in communications spans Telex to Twitter. She founded the knowledge networking business Editorial Intelligence, in 2005, having decided that the Internet age was ushering in a new era in connectivity for professionals who needed new skills for new times, and new ways in which to network face-to-face. A member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Informed Societies, and of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office Diplomatic Excellence Panel, Julia Hobsbawm was made Honorary Visiting Professor in Networking at London’s Cass Business School in 2011 (the world’s first such appointment) and Honorary Visiting Professor in Networking at UCS Suffolk in 2012, the same year that Editorial Intelligence began its corporate development programme in teaching Knowledge Networking skills and capability-building programme, ‘Connecting for Success’. www.editorialintelligence.com Acknowledgements My Executive MBA and corporate students at Cass Business School and Cass Executive Education and corporate students of Editorial Intelligence’s ‘Connecting for Success’ programme have taught me a great deal since about the need for a roadmap in networks and networking. In particular, ongoing conversations with the following have shaped my thinking considerably: Gemma Lines at Citi (also quoted in this report); Tommy Helsby, Sarah Dudney, Peter York, and my Board at Editorial Intelligence; Adrian Monck at the World Economic Forum; Stephen Barber at Pictet; Suzanna Taverne of the BBC; Heather McGregor of Taylor: Bennett; Lynda Gratton of Hot Spots and London Business School; Sanjay Nazerali of Carat; MT Rainey of TH_NK!; Hannah Rothschild of The Rothschild Foundation; Anya Schiffrin of Columbia University; Alice Sherwood of the Policy Institute at King’s College, London and the Kit Kat Club; Jessica Morris of Fishburn, New York and Professor Cliff Oswick, Deputy Dean of Cass Business School. And finally my husband Alaric Bamping, who is always ahead of the curve. Thanks to Robert Madelin of the European Commission; William Eccleshare of Clear Channel Outdoor; Jenny Willott MP, Employment Relations Minister; Don Tapscott of Moxie Insight; Matthew Rycroft of Foreign & Commonwealth Office for their incisive comments for this Paper. Finally, I would like to thank Jane Robinson and EY for inviting me to write this whitepaper in the first place, and to Simon Brooks of MSLGROUP London.

Julia Hobsbawm Editorial Intelligence


Recommended reading • Wayne.E.Baker, Networking Smart: How to Build Relationships for Personal and Organisational Success. i-universe.com, New York, 2000 • A lbert-Laszlo Barabasi, Linked: The New Science of Networks. Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, 2002 • Ronald S.Burt, Brokerage & Closure: An Introduction to Social Capital. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005 • Frances Cairncross, The Company of the Future: Meeting The Management Challenges of the Communications Revolution. Profile Books, London 2002 • Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler, Connected: The Surprising Power of our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2009 • Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success. Allen Lane, London, 2008 • Adam Grant, Give & Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success. Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London, 2013 • Lynda Gratton, The Shift: The Future of Work is Already Here. Collins, London, 2011 • Sanjeev Goyal, Connections: An Introduction to the Economics of Networks. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2007 • Margaret Heffernan, A Bigger Prize: Why Competition Isn’t Everything and How We Do Better. Simon & Schuster, London, 2014 • Noreena Hertz, Eyes Wide Open: How to Make Smart Decisions in a Confusing World. William Collins, London, 2013 • David Howell, Old Links and New Ties: Power and Persuasion in an Age of Networks. I.B.Tauris, London, 2014 • Oliver James, Office Politics: How to Thrive in a World of Lying, Backstabbing and Dirty Tricks. Vermillion, London, 2013 • C harles Kadushin, Understanding Social Networks: Theories, Concepts, and Findings. Oxford University Press, New York, 2012 • Joshua Klein, Reputation Economics: Why Who You Know is Worth More Than What You Have. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2014 • Matthew D. Lieberman, Social: Why our Brains are Wired to Connect. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013 • Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman, Networked: The New Social Operating System. MIT Press, Cambridge, 2012 • Ivan Robertson and Cary Cooper, Wellbeing: Productivity & Happiness at Work. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2011 • Pamela Ryckman, Stiletto Network: Inside The Women’s Power Circles That Are Changing The Face of Business. American Management Association, New York, 2013 • Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: WH Allen, London, 2013 • David J Skyrme, Knowledge Networking: Creating the Collaborative Enterprise. Butterworth Heinemann, Oxford, 1999 • Tom Standage, Writing on the Wall: Social Media — the first 2,000 Years. Bloomsbury, London, 2013 • Sherry Turkle, Alone, Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. Basic Books, Philadelphia, 2011 • Ducan J.Watts, Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age. Vintage, London, 2004

17


18

EY | Assurance | Tax | Transactions | Advisory About EY EY is a global leader in Assurance, Tax, Transaction and Advisory Services. The insights and quality services we deliver help build trust and confidence in the capital markets and in economies the world over. We develop outstanding leaders and teams to deliver on our promises to all of our stakeholders. In so doing, we play a critical role in building a better working world for our people, for our clients and for our communities. EY refers to the global organization, and may refer to one or more, of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients. For more information about our organization, please visit ey.com.

Ernst & Young LLP The UK firm Ernst & Young LLP is a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales with registered number OC300001 and is a member firm of Ernst & Young Global Limited. Ernst & Young LLP, 1 More London Place, London, SE1 2AF. © Julia Hobsbawm. published in the UK, all rights reserved. Design and Artwork by saslondon.com The contents of this whitepaper and the views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Ernst & Young LLP. Information in this publication is intended to provide only a general outline of the subjects covered. It should neither be regarded as comprehensive nor sufficient for making decisions, nor should it be used in place of professional advice. Ernst & Young LLP accepts no responsibility for any loss arising from any action taken or not taken by anyone using this material.

ey.com/uk