The Art and Science of Networking for Executives

Networking at the senior executive level is a lot about building the connections with the right people, at the right time, for the right reason. Whether you are a senior executive in transition or considering a new opportunity, a professional happily employed or consulting and looking for new partnerships and clients, or a recently re-employed businessperson after a challenging job search, it is increasingly more important for senior executives to build and nurture senior-level connections when considering your long-term career objectives and financial goals.

The thoughts and advice below were offered at the September 28 ExecuNet Silicon Valley meeting facilitated by FountainBlue CEO Linda Holroyd, with comments by Al Hulvey from Greetings Manager and the event participants.

Working Definition: Networking is: An Active process of building and managing productive relationships with all of your contacts (Professor Wayne E. Baker from his Networking Smart Book)

• Networking during transitions leads to:
• Paid better, promoted faster, new jobs quicker (Networking Smart, How to Build Relationships for Personal and Organizational Success, Wayne E. Baker)

http://ohcm.gsfc.nasa.gov/career/book05.htm, http://www.amazon.com/Networking-Smart-Relationships-Personal-Organizational/dp/0595007864

64% of jobs found by networking (Drake, Beam and Morin, http://www.DBMCareerServices.com)

68% startup money found by networking (same as above)

How is Networking Different for Executives?

• There are fewer events for executives only
• Successful executives have built a network for a lifetime; this could work for you, when someone favors you because of a relationship, or against you if someone else who may be less qualified gets chosen for a position because of a relationship
• More sense of reciprocity for executives
• Senior executives sometimes find it awkward to network with less junior people
• There are fewer executives in general.
• The executives are really busy and time is more valuable for them

Why is Networking for Executives More Important Now?

• The world is a more complex place. Having a extensive network helps busy executives better understand the trends and keep up with the times.
• The tenure for jobs is now 3.8 years, less for senior executives. This means that as many as 15% to 20% of qualified executives sit on the sidelines

The Art of Networking

• Everyone has his own style
• Reasons for a successful connection vary depending on who you’re working with
• Random chance is a factor
• Sometimes you find your connections in the strangest places!
  
• The Science of Networking
• Understanding your objectives and developing a plan will increase your probability of success
• The more you build your network, the more likely your network will continue to grow. The larger your network, the more likely you can leverage it to serve your needs, and that of others in your network
• The better you plan and prepare, the more likely you are to succeed

Five Keys to Executive Networking

1. Your Reputation Matters - Be professional, Be courteous and gracious, Be thankful, Be helpful
2. Know Your Objectives and Make a Plan to Achieve Them
3. Follow Through
4. Build on Successes. Networking is for life, not just for the objective you set for today
5. It’s Not All About You - Just as important as what’s in it for you is what’s in it for the other party

Advice on Bringing a Product to Market

Below are comments from our facilitators for the September 18, 2006 Life Science Entrepreneurs' Forum, Michael Shuster from Fenwick & West and Melinda Richter from SJ Biocenter and others in attendance at the event.

Get Market Clarity: Know Your Target Market
Make sure you understand which slice of the market you'd like to target, who your competitors are targeting, what your edge is over those competitors, how you will attack that market, etc.,
Make sure you understand your target customer - it may not be the person you initially thought it would be

Be flexible
If your target market, customer, team, product, etc., changes, respond accordingly
When working with angels, VCs, etc., be flexible about your control of the company and the product and trust in their experience and wisdom, but use good judgement in selecting a funder who is compatible with your business and professional style. (Rarely do companies succeed with the entrepreneur's original product idea.)

Run a quality organization
IP, product, team, market, etc., are all important for the success of an organization.
Get quality legal and business advice (for example from Fenwick & West) to protect your IP and business interests. They can also offer introductions to the right investors.
Have your own vision and line up your partners who are in support of that vision. (This can help align supporters and investors.)

When seeking funding:
Consider all the funding options: High net-worth individuals, angels, angel funds, dedicated funds, foundations, banks, institutions. VCs are also an option, but they can be 'expensive and painful' money.
When seeking funding, do not stop focusing on building the business. The funding itself is not the exit path.

When bringing a life science product to market:
Don't change the doctor's actions
Don't require changes in how reimbursements are processed.

Life Science Success Stories

Silicon Valley is world-renown for its technology, its business success stories, and its innovative and entrepreneurial culture. While we're still reaping the benefits of the age of the personal computer and the age of the internet, the new buzz in the last few years has been on the convergence of bio, nano and information technologies. This month's panel will focus on life science success stories and consider how life science companies differ from more strictly high-tech companies, which key success factors for life science companies, and other thoughts, while sharing stories of how individual companies managed to succeed in this challenging new industry

The facilitators and panelists for the September 15, 2006 Connections meeting on Life Science Success Stories were facilitator Ken Macrae, Ed Amento from Theracos, Sergio Garcia from Fenwick & West, Geetha Rao, and Dave Whitman from Pharmadyn. Below are some words of advice shared by the facilitator and panelists, as well as the collective wisdom of the audience.

• Define success
  Venture Funding?
  Delivery of product?
  Merger/Acquisition Event?
  Great Team?
  
• Grasp and communicate the market opportunity and trends
  VCs can work with technology challenges and even leadership challenges, market challenges are much more difficult to address
  

Get support

• IP and corporate attorney from established, well-respected firm like Fenwick & West has many advantages
  Protect what you have, build the fences;
  When working in partnerships, attorneys can help develop an understanding of who owns which IP
  Attorneys from established firms are better positioned to negotiate with VCs as they have more leverage
  
• Finance professional
  
• Business Development professional
  
• Management professional

Don't have a one-man team
Management Team should be able to speak candidly, manage conflict, build consensus
Corporate Board
Scientific Board (not just the big names): Technical advice and cross-checking; Represent product to professional environment, users, evangelists; Regulatory pathway; Put investor's minds at rest

• Company qualities
  Must have a balance of vision, passion, discipline and risk management
  Senior management must be able to balance the business people (rewarded for teamwork, collective problem-solving, seeing beyond the data) and the scientists (rewarded for facts, being #1)
  Senior management must have the ability to manage the tremendous cash-burn of R&D activities while sustaining the enterprise and growing
  

Trends in Funding:

• Pharmaceutical companies are funding earlier stage companies
• Consequently, VCs are looking for funding opportunities before pharma companies fund them
• As a result, entrepreneurs may have more latitude in the negotiations, both in seeking funding earlier in development and also negotiating governance agreements through the funding process.
• Mergers and acquisitions are a more common exit path.

Education is Fundamental: How Executives and Entrepreneurs Can Support the Push for Quality

Access to quality education is the key to a strong business and cultural infrastructure as well as a healthy and sustainable economy. Few leaders would contest that. Yet the data below provided by the National Education Association is disturbing at best. (See http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/welcome.asp and click on the Compare California link.)

• California is one of the wealthiest states, but the personal income per student, (the sum of all residents’ personal income divided by the number of K-12 public school students) is just below average (ranked 19th in 2002), a little less than $100 below the national average of $187,122, because California has a higher proportion of young people compared to most other states (ranking sixth in the percentage of residents under 18 in 2002). (More recent numbers are not yet available.)
• In 2001-02—for the first time in more than 20 years—California was above the national average in per capita expenditures on K-12 schools, but California still consistently falls below the national average in per-pupil expenditures, ranking 31st in 2001-02, according to the National Education Association (NEA) Rankings & Estimates 2004-05. In 2003-04 the state moved up to 29th in the nation. At $7,584 per student, California was at 92% of the national average and ranked in the middle of the five most populous states.
• California has higher-than-average pupil-teacher ratios. In 2003-04 teachers were expected to handle about 35% more students and principals/assistant principals, district administrators, guidance counselors, and librarians even more. In 2003-04 California ranked 3rd in the nation with the largest pupil-teacher ratio (20.6 to 1) except for Arizona and Utah, according to NEA.
  In addition, California was last in librarians and next-to-last in guidance counselors and principals/assistant principals in 2003-04, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The state also ranked 48th in the nation in officials and administrators per pupil and last among the five most populous states.

FountainBlue's September 8, 2006 panel on the topic of Education is Fundamental: How Executives and Entrepreneurs Can Support the Push for Quality featured facilitator Usha Sekar, Geoff Ainscow from the Sunnyvale School District Education Foundation, Hillary Aitken from BUILD, and Paula Wasowska from Cisco. Their candid stories, concrete data and detailed descriptions of successful programs have sparked an overwhelmingly positive response. Special thanks to Usha Sekar, who has commited to follow up and create the ability to compile data, coalesce energy and drive, and present concrete concepts so that we can follow up on our passion to forge concrete change on behalf of our children! Below are some notes from our discussion.

Facts About Our Schools

• Schools can be resistant to change and innovation.
• Schools lack resources and funding: See

http://www.eddata.com for the details

We as a culture need to have a greater interest in the needs of our children. The most dominant factor in a child's education is the parent, the second most dominant are teachers. Class size is a distant third. Yet we as a culture do not support our teachers as well or as much as we should.

California schools rapidly went from being the best educational system in the US in the 1970s to the worst in the nation in 1998.

What Executives and Entrepreneurs Can Do to Support the Push for Quality, Despite the Challenges

• A public-private partnership with clear leadership, direction, and focus on results is not only necessary but urgently needed.
• Get educated and involved. Research online and other resources already available
  http://www.mathscore.com; http://www.discoverychannel.com Discovery Channel Resources, unitedstreaming.com
• Believe that you can make a difference acting locally, impacting globally, sharing your time, talent and dollars.
• The problem is immense, so break it down into smaller pieces. Develop a clarity of path on specific actions to be taken; Focus on the big picture, what really matters; Join forces with like-minded, passionate individuals who are committed to make changes and with the knowledge, skills, resources to make a difference.
• We can learn from how others how other cultures Countries that invest in their children are investing in the economic future of their country. Example: although Ethiopian children may not have shoes, there is an investment in computers at their schools because the community leaders recognize that the education of these children will allow them to meet their basic needs and well beyond that.
• Do not compare ourselves to ourselves, look cross-culturally success stories and emulate the working models. Example, in Sweden, schools are well funded, they are the hub of a community. There is cross-age tutoring where children teach their grandparents computer skills for example.
• Influence policy to make sustainable changes for our educational system. (FountainBlue will have a follow-up event on this topic.)

We invite your comments.