Friday Reflection (No. 58): Nourishing your Garden of Networks - Strategic (Part 3)
April 21, 2023
This week’s Friday reflection will continue the series on the four distinct types of networks that help leaders achieve full potential. Last time, we explored the Operational Network. This week we will traverse the Strategic Network.
Leadership principle: Curate your Strategic Network for quality and diversity of perspective.
To start, we need to take a bit of a detour to define one of the most overused and ill-defined terms in organizational life - STRATEGIC. What the heck does it actually mean?
I wish I could give a one line definition, but it would lack nuance, so here’s a few bullets:
Strategic individuals excel in five distinct areas:
Envisioning the future by connecting dots in the external environment (macro, market, competition, customers, regulators)1
Articulating a vision for how an organization can uniquely capitalize on these external trends
Translating this future vision into an aspirational yet executable multi-year plan that outlines the value to stakeholders as well as a high-level timeline
Balancing analytics (data, logic) and intuition in decision-making
Adapting proactively to change both in the moment and over longer time horizons
Now that we’ve established what it means to be strategic, let’s define a Strategic Network: it is a set of individuals with diverse skills, knowledge, and resources that contribute the inputs that help you hone your strategic insight. In other words, this group of professionals provides the sunlight, water, and nutrients needed to help you navigate the uncertainty of the future.
Let’s make this even more practical (and have a bit of fun doing it). Using characters from the MCU’s2 Black Panther universe, I’ll share the six must-have “archetypes” in your Strategic Network:
Zuri (Industry Sages): As Zuri served as a wise advisor to T'Challa (Black Panther for those not into MCU), it’s critical to have a sage who knows the industry you operate in and offers wisdom, guidance, and experience to help you navigate challenges and refine your approach in the ever-changing industry landscape. They are often able to help you make sense of how changes in external environment will affect your enterprise and your priorities.
Nakia (Industry Peers): Much like Nakia, a skilled warrior and T'Challa's trusted ally, your external industry peers are valuable connections. You can exchange knowledge (using discretion), compare insights and collaborate (where appropriate). These relationships help augment your ability to spot trends sooner.
Shuri (Tech Virtuosos): Shuri's brilliance and technological expertise are integral to Wakanda's success, and digitally savvy leaders in your network possess a similar ability to bring insights and help you stay current on the implications of emerging technologies. They can also link you with valuable resources and contacts.
Queen Ramonda (Policy Navigators): Queen Ramonda, T’Challa’s mother and also leading diplomat, regularly acts as a bridge between Wakanda and other nations. The role of the policy navigator in your network is becoming increasingly important, even in industries where this had not been the case a decade ago. You need someone on speed dial who can help you think through policy and regulatory implications. Like Queen Ramonda, the best Policy Navigators have a strong rolodex of government officials.
M'Baku (Peers from outside your industry) As the leader of the Jabari Tribe, M'Baku brings a unique perspective. Similarly, your strategic network should also include individuals from outside your industry and areas of expertise. They provide diverse insights that can help see complex problems from a different angle and can serve as inspiration for innovation.
Avengers (Global ambassadors): T'Challa is willing to learn from and collaborate with leaders from other cultures such as the Avengers. Similarly, it is critical to have leaders who come from different geographies who may share a different worldview from you.3 These relationships can help navigate cultural complexities and may help you to integrate useful practices or technologies into your organization.
Griot (Digital tools): Shuri’s AI companion, Griot, was an essential ingredient in her discovery process. Similarly, digital tools including AI like Chat GPT and carefully curated networks on Twitter and LinkedIn can lend additional strategic insight that complements what you learn from “real life” relationships.
To recap, there are 6 archetypes you want to have in your strategic network4:
Industry sage
Industry peer
Tech virtuoso
Policy navigator
Peer from outside your industry
Global ambassador(s)
It will take time to ensure you have each of these perspectives represented in your strategic network. In most cases, you also likely need more than one of each archetype. The key is to be intentional about fostering these relationships and hold a high bar for what quality looks like for each archetype. Where you have gaps, you can leverage your “Griot” i.e. digital tools to help you learn and gain this perspective in the interim.
Take Action: Practical and Proven Steps
Plan your strategic network: Just as a gardener must decide which plants will best suit their plot, take the time identify each of the people that can fit the archetypes above. This will help you to identify the connections you already have and which ones you need to cultivate. From there, come up with a specific plan about “how” you’ll start to build these connections. This intentional planning ensures that your network remains aligned with your aspirations.
Quality over quantity: The healthiest gardens have a careful balance of plants, and your Strategic Network should have a similar equilibrium. Start by nurturing 5-10 deep, meaningful relationships with individuals who offer valuable insights that fit the archetypes. Be sure that at least one of these individuals is from outside your industry (i.e., your M’Baku).
Sow seeds generously: To grow a lush garden, you must scatter seeds, and similarly, to develop a strategic network, you need to actively engage with others. One way to do this is to attend industry events or smaller workshops to encounter like-minded professionals. That said, as I shared in the original post, the most important thing you can do is to keep doing interesting things and share about them publicly. This will attract the right folks. You can also connect and/or follow leaders on Twitter and LinkedIn that can help you filter materials that will accelerate your learning and insight.5
Tend to your strategic network: Just as plants require ongoing care, so do your connections. Stay in touch through regular check-ins, share updates on your progress, and express gratitude for their support. Look for ways to offer them resources/ideas that can help them.
Reflect: Some Questions to Consider
Which archetype is well represented in your strategic network?
Which archetype is absent in your strategic network?
What are two actions you can take this week to strengthen your strategic network?
If this week’s Friday Reflection was practical or enjoyable (or maybe even both!), please share it with your colleagues and friends.
This is the proverbial “seeing around corners.”
MCU = Marvel Cinematic Universe. Those who have been reading my newsletters for a while won’t need this note. If you don’t know, now you know. Somewhat relatedly, I’ve gotten a few comments about whether my Marvel references might make me come across as less serious or credible with the senior executives that are discovering my work for the first time. After all CEO succession and coaching executives at some of the highest levels in business is SERIOUS and high stakes. While I take my work and advisory very seriously, I try not to take myself too seriously and I just freakin’ love Marvel and the stories contained in the comics. And of all of the stories, Black Panther is my favorite…hence why I reference it so often. I guess this note is a long way of saying, you can be playful and credible in serious environments. The two are not mutually exclusive.
I find this to be particularly important for leaders from the U.S. They can be very myopic about how the world works and misread other cultures in Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia. They also tend to underappreciate the diversity that exists in each of these continents.
This framework is one that I am building in public. It’s probably not fully exhaustive and it’s possible that one individual could fulfill multiple of these roles. It is informed primarily by three sources my own approach to building my strategic network, lots of great literature out there on strategic networks and what I’ve learned in my work with senior executives. Linda Hill’s work that I cited in the first post in this series is a great place to start. Others are this piece by Herminia Ibarra and Mark Lee Hunter as well as this piece by Brian Uzzi and Sharon Dunlap.
People like to bash Twitter and LinkedIn (and they deserve it….mostly). That said, I find that these two platforms are the most helpful to me in filtering out noise and finding new insights. The key is to overinvest in figuring out who to follow on the topics that most impact your business, your industry and the macro.