We’ve been discussing the issue highlighted by this posting internally. I think that the question boils down to this:
Do people currently feel so proprietary about their professional connections that they feel their connections must remain confidential to remain professionally competitive?
In the fairly recent past some have certainly felt this way, but the interent is radically changing that. Search, social networks and the massive increase of data available online to anyone makes it much easier to find people and things. This is causing our understanding and appreciation of relationships to change back to the way things were much longer ago…
It’s 1500, somewhere in Europe. Everyone in town knows the blacksmith; so what? The interesting questions were much more complex and contextual - eg who would the blacksmith let slide on payments? Who does the blacksmith socialize with? Is the farrier in town profesionally cooperative with the blacksmith, or is she a competitor?
Preserving knowledge of the existence of nodes in a social network as if they are proprietary IP and must remain obfuscated is an “old school” modern business behavior. It implies that the node on the other end would be happy to deal in the same manner with anyone, and as such it devalues the relationship to such a great extent that you have to wonder if there’s a relationship there at all.
Economies based on this kind of artificial scarcity are excessively vulnerable in a modern age of search and the internet.
Back when I ran a paintball field, and long before the interwebz had search, I found a source for the smoke grenades that most of us sold at our fields in WA state. It was hard to find this guy; he was in the Midwest somewhere and it took about 3 or 4 people hops and lots of phone chatting to get to him.
Once I did find him I was able to buy the grenades in fairly small numbers - say a case at a time - and sell them at a significant mark-up while still under-cutting my local competition. In essence I became a regional distributor. It was a good deal for me and for the other guy.
However he owed me nothing and he just wanted to move product, and so ANYONE who found him could get the same deal I got. Eventually someone did, which cut my regional advantage down to nothing. I still got a good price, but ultimately what happened was the regional price re-set so that we all got close to the same markup of a buck or so a grenade.
These days, that kind of advantage is tremendously fleeting. What matters is relationships themselves, and how they are nurtured over time. If just know who I talk to makes you directly competitive with me, then I am not doing my job.
I understand that sales relationships can be different animals than other kinds of relationships, and that sales people can feel very proprietary about their network. Inside Trampoline we’ve been very fortunate in that Adrian and the rest of the sales team treat our sales relationships as long-term investments which aren’t prone to being under-mined by other people simply knowing about them.
This happens to align nicely with our overall view of relationships - it’s not only who you know but also how you know them that matters.
