by Rabison Shumba

Networks and relationships will take you beyond where your salary (money), schooling (education) or smartness (intelligence) have taken you. Greatness is built through deliberate relationship formations (networking). The bigger your network, the greater your reach. Networks are made of mutually beneficial relationships where it is not about you benefiting but others benefiting from your existence and established networks. The concept of networking has been mastered by some communities and societies around the world where a dollar is circulated within the same community a minimum of 6 times before it goes out to other networks. The Indian community is one such smart community where they support and spur each other to greatness. Well done Indians.

You may be asking yourself "Where do I start"? That is a good question. If you have your phone, assess how many contacts you have in your address book. Minus those that you added for fun or without the owner's consent; that shows you your reach or network. Go to your email address book. Count people whose emails you have but are not in your phone and add that number to the number you had from your cellphone. Do a similar exercise with Facebook and keep adding the numbers. Do that with all the other social networking and business networking platforms you do have; in all situations just ensure you are not duplicating yourself. It would be wiser to start with the area which you feel has most contacts. This is not merely a game of numbers but also consider the quality of people in your network as you go through this process. I may have 15 influential valuable people in my network. Someone may have 600 contacts which will not take them anywhere.