Networking

People coming together to share information about themselves and their experiences.

Whenever people get together with a common interest and swap experiences they are networking. Sharing information with people you would not normally meet is a potent learning brew but it has to be triggered by an 'event' or else it tends to be one of those ideas that is nice in theory but gets squeezed out in practice.

Your only task is to bring people together. Once that has been accomplished, networking will be the inevitable consequence.

There are a number of ways you could trigger networking ranging from informal to formal. Perhaps the most informal is to ensure that people have a place to congregate and an excuse to do so. Over a coffee break or lunch break might suffice. If you want to broaden the membership of the network you could invite people from different functions, but with a common interest, to meet and compare notes. Alternatively, you could be more formal and organise a conference, with a few speakers to stimulate debate, but with plenty of time for participants to mingle, converse and learn from each other.

If you want people to network with people outside your organisation, then encourage them to join external interest groups or professional bodies and/or to attend one day seminars where people with similar interests are likely to gather through a process of self-selection.

Besides acquiring useful information specific to a given topic or issue, people stand to learn a number of valuable things from networking. For example they will discover that:

• people everywhere share similar concerns and problems
  
  
• swapping experiences is a more powerful way to learn than listening to the 'experts' or gurus
  
  
• asking and answering questions and active listening are the only three behaviours you need to network effectively
  
  
• the claim that 'it isn't what you know but who you know that counts' is cynical and untrue. The truth is 'it's what you know from who you know that counts'.

Whilst 'old boy' networks have an understandable reputation for being elitist, no-one doubts their power to influence. 'Learning' networks, by contrast, provide all participants with equal opportunities to learn and develop and are above suspicion. Stimulate networking and you'll stimulate learning.