Tap Network Intelligence. Develop Network Literacy.

Navigate Professional Challenges with Network Intelligence

Our educational system trains us to memorize facts stored in textbooks and then regurgitate them on an exam. Better schools will “teach you how to learn,” but it’s still not learning by doing, and it’s still not a particularly social undertaking. You study for a test and you take the test alone. But entrepreneurs don’t think and learn this way, and neither should you. School is single-player mode. The real world is multiplayer mode.

Entrepreneurs navigate the day-to-day issues of running a company in an ever-changing world by getting out in the world and gathering intelligence: actionable, timely information on all facets of their business. You need similarly good intelligence to run the startup of you. Stockpiling facts won’t get you anywhere. What will get you somewhere is being able to access the information you need, when you need it—which usually is very soon.

Both entrepreneurs and ambitious professionals gather accurate and actionable information from one main source: people in their network. It’s people who help you understand your assets, your aspirations, and the market realities; it’s people who help you vet and gain introductions to possible allies and trust connections; it’s people who help you track the risk attached to a given opportunity.

What you get when you connect to other people’s brains is called network intelligence.

Your network is an indispensable source of intelligence because:

• People sometimes offer private observations and impressions that would never appear in a public source. Only a co-worker can clue you in to your boss’s idiosyncratic preferences. Only a friend working in another organization can tell you about an unannounced job position being created there.
• People offer personalized, contextualized advice. Friends and family, allies, and others know your interests and can tailor their information and advice accordingly.
• People can filter information: they can tell you which books to read; which parts of an article are important and truthful; which news sources to trust or not to trust. In an age of information overload, the value of this ability to filter is hard to overstate.
• Many people simply think better thoughts and make better decisions when in dialogue with others. 

Network Literacy

For centuries, literacy meant the ability to read and write. Today, however, you also need network literacy: knowing how to conceptualize, access, and benefit from the information flowing through your web of relationships, both online and off.

Domain Experts, “You” Experts, Free-Range Experts

One way to start is by identifying who in your network might be able to help with career decisions. Then sort those people into three categories:

1. Domain experts. These are the pros, the people who really know the ins and outs of a specific, relevant topic. Got a question about negotiating your salary? Ask your friend who’s hired dozens of people.
2. “You” experts. These are the people who know you well. They may not be up on the latest industry happenings, but they can help you unpack feelings of confusion and even intuit how you’ll likely feel about various outcomes of your decision.
3. Free-range experts. These are really smart people you trust. They may not be domain experts in the specific topic area and may not know you well, but a really smart outsider can sometimes offer valuable advice different from anything else you’ll hear.

Ask Good Questions

It’s useful to have a stash of good questions always at the ready. The economist Tyler Cowen likes to ask, “What’s the most interesting thing you’ve learned over the past few months?” Other questions could be: What's keeping you up at night? What’s a good book you’ve read recently? What’s a trend in your industry that wouldn’t be obvious to outsiders? Pose your inquiries in ways that generate the most relevant and useful answers.

Share Intel to Get Intel

To jump-start a cycle of reciprocity, share intelligence and advice that may be useful to the other person. Offer a small gift of information—ideally not information easily found online or through some publicly available source (because that’s not adding much value) but also that’s not secret or confidential (you don’t want to breach confidences or be seen as untrustworthy).

Check Your Gut

Making good decisions involves listening to your instincts before you even write that first email. Decades of research on the science of decision-making have demonstrated that, in many situations, our gut or “blink” reactions can be very good.

Ask People About Other People: Reference Checks

The people you work with, whether as a subordinate, a colleague, or a superior, will shape your career, compounding over time. When embarking on any sort of professional relationship, you need on-the-ground intelligence, what we call “whisper insights,” about the person. Which is to say, you need the perspectives of people who have actual experience with the person.

And remember, the value of any piece of information largely depends on whom you get it from. It’s not enough to simply gather information. You also have to skillfully judge the reliability of the sources, weigh the quality of their firsthand knowledge, and synthesize all the various inputs to make an informed decision.

Utilizing network intelligence will be a force multiplier for your career.

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Please share in the comments section: How have you tapped Network Intelligence?

Text adapted from my book with Ben Casnocha: The Startup of You: Adapt, Take Risks, Grow Your Network, and Transform Your Career (Currency, an imprint of Random House, 2022).