When you or your team are problem-solving through innovation, you have to hone yourself to search for the doors and signals of opportunity. Behavioural theory has given us fascinating insights into what influences, nudges and moves people. How about what inspires people?
Inspiration rarely happens in isolation. Behavioural theory shows us what nudges people, but it’s often through our connections that inspiration takes hold and scales. To build what’s next, you’ll need to see things others don’t, read between the lines and drive connections that empower those around you to embrace the visionary. Your network will always be an incredibly important part of that, if not the centre, so you need to be focused on how you can inspire and expand it.
Ideas are everywhere, but an idea has to be developed through stages of feasibility. The more your metaphorical radar pings your environment for open minds and allies, the more likely you can give your boundless creativity to the people who can help make it a reality. There lies a magical spot in execution where you can be far more productive and generate momentum across multiple fronts.
Here are some original heuristics to keep you in the A-league, and drive inspiring connections that leave a lasting impact on the world.
State your motives, ask for theirs, honesty wins
When you make a connection or meet with someone, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with having a motive. In fact, given that the person you’re meeting is likely time-pushed, it’s actually respectful to let them know what you aim to get out of the interaction
Be super open about your best, base and worst case scenarios. Knowing where you stand is valuable to them, and when you break from the meeting, a great connection will always have your back and remember.
You need to reciprocate, too! Always be looking to help people. Everyone is selling something… generosity is far more valuable.
Meeting awareness
If heading to an office with lots of companies, be curious. Who else is there in the building? Does anything jump out as awesome or drive curiosity? Look at the names up on the wall with a floor number next to them. Often businesses subconsciously cluster with either complimentary or competitive services. If you were there to meet someone awesome, chances are there’s others.
You might find companies, ventures and workspaces that you didn’t know existed or where they operated from. Having a knowledge of where key companies are based is also super useful—you have a view of the landscape others may overlook. Even if it’s just for helpful small talk and anecdotes.
Be a name tag ninja
When you go to an event and all the tags are on the table, check out who’s coming. Be subtly nosy. With so many networking events these days, you can only really test an event by attending, so the first signal you have is who planned to be there. Better still, who didn’t attend. Find the names of relevant people, research their companies and figure out if there’s a context that inspires or matters.
The simple fact you were both invited to the same event is a perfect reason to reach out with a “sorry I missed you. You can build a persona of those attending and mentally assign value to the event you attended with it. Who hasn’t turned up? Have you noticed that at other events? Who is supportive of events you like? Perhaps if you ran an event, they’re the folks first on your list to support.
Run network maintenance
No, not that kind of network. It’s much more fun than devops! Your network is everything—but how often do you make sure it's in good health and enriched? Try and regularly deep scroll through your DMs. Revisit your LinkedIn network, sending personal notes. Engage with authentic content to show support. People move jobs all the time, send a “congrats” and revisit possibilities. Going back through your contacts and DMs often allows you to find new exciting conversations or reignite old ones, too. It’s easy to miss messages these days.
While you’re at it, establish who the key nodes in your network are: remember who is inspiring you. Do they know each other too? Lots of mutual connections can be a good or a bad signal. You don’t want to be in an echo chamber as much as you do want to be with authentic, visionary-ready people. Less is sometimes more. It signals your tapping adjacent networks and expanding your honeycomb of potential.
Create favours
It might sound transactional, but who do you owe a favour? Those people are amazing and likely the kind you want to be around. Equally, who owes you one? If you can’t list many, then you need to dollop a good chunk of generosity and thoughtfulness on your network. There’s nothing more invigorating than helping people, particularly if it's connecting two good eggs. You’ll get value and joy out of seeing inspiring people build value. Synergy may be a cheesy word, but it’s often a free feeling.
But be warned. A favour isn’t something to “call in”—you need to keep in touch with the people you’ve helped and if you find they aren’t kind back, then you know your good intentions might be best deployed elsewhere. The good eggs will give back to you. If you don’t ask, you are conveying a persona. “I didn’t do this for me, it really was for you. You know more about me now.” Reputation is a great thing.
Signal you listened and saw someone
When you catch the obsession with an idea or project, it can be easy to be single minded, oriented on outcome. You’ll rarely hit a goal without someone else supporting or engaging. Remember the little things. If you are meeting someone new, who could help you succeed, try and remember the personal things they tell you. Everyone wants their life to be seen, heard and treasured. If they mentioned a pastime, personal challenge, or family, ensure you always have empathy mode on.
Talk to strangers
It pays to talk to everyone. Cab drivers, chuggers, homeless people, strangers on the train.
If someone has a work call or is openly working on something, when there’s a moment, give them credit for working round the clock, “you sound busy, what do you do?”. Those magic four words unlock an entire world.
Connect faster
If you meet someone useful, especially at an event, connect fast. You never know when they need to shoot. Most people are 'network defensive', they are busy and it’s easy to see a new connection as a distraction. Building meaningful connections is hard. Especially when we’re all bombarded by the generic. If you sense someone is a good egg, just connect. Don’t try to find a rationale. Sometimes a person being interesting or inspiring is the rationale. Be original, be decisive, move fast. Get the card or connection in the moment where you strike a vibe. And follow up if you can. Then, during your regular network maintenance, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by an awesome connection you made.
Create a third, common variable
If you meet a great person, find a way to create a new bubble between you. Imagine it’s a balloon you can both hold or bop around. It’s delicate. A mutually beneficial thing isn’t you selling to them. That might be an association, a hackathon, a networking event, a lobbying issue, or an interest group. As long as it is parallel to what you both do by way of a day job, it’s authentic.
It’s far easier to find commercial opportunities once you’re on the same team. The journey there is far more fun. Create a team. It can be as simple as a dinner you both invite two others to... to shoot the breeze. Or, it can be visionary. Strategically related to both of your motives and needs for your working lives.
Always be visionary
There are plenty of visionary people, there are less people who are willing to be visionary out loud and unabashed. So how do you meet the shy-visionaries, who might not say out loud what they wish was being built for the future? That means when you go visionary, you’re basically popping a signal flare. All the shy-visionaries now have a light to walk towards. Gathering them together will be just brilliant fun.
There you have it, 9 ways to perfect your business development skills. All this is muscle memory. You’re human, you’ll find empathy and generosity comes naturally and feels way better than transactional approaches. Robots don’t make good visionaries or business developers, creative minds do.
Want to connect to find out more about partnering with The49? Our inbox is always open. Head here.
