New Game-Plan: Networking

Services

About Us

Our services and capabilities:

• Building Networking Capability for sectors, organisations and teams

• Enabling organisations to understand, design and develop Networks

• Building Structured Networks for collaborative working in priority areas

• Transferring and embedding the essential tools and skills for Networking

Why is Networking important?

In all areas of work, achieving exceptional results now depends on effective Networking. We define Networking as 'the human process that creates and maintains relationships based on trust, shared interests and common objectives'. Networking takes place at all levels, from individuals through groups, organisations and sectors to whole economies and between people working across functional and organisational interfaces:

Networking - critical at all levels from economies to individuals

These interfaces are exciting areas for boosting productivity and innovation, and critical to an organisation's success. By building trust, Networking enables the exchange of high-value knowledge. Networking is adaptable, flexible, motivating, and well-suited to rapidly changing, complex environments.

Networking creates and maintains Networks. Valuable Networks are built using the energy and skills of individuals. Networks take on diverse forms and many operate informally. While this is partly a strength, lack of structure can prevent Networks from realising their full value. Organisations and entire sectors need to harness Networks to achieve their aims, but, until now, they have lacked the necessary models and toolkit.

When well-implemented, Networks can be a powerful 'organisation form', complementing traditional management structures, project teams and stakeholder Committees and Panels. Organisations now need to develop Networks  alongside these traditional forms, adopting the 'Structured Network' model.

We explore these themes further in two articles. Get connected explains how Networking can help to convert exemplary science into profitable business. Innovation by Networking explains how Networks and Networking are critical to successful innovation across business functions.

Doesn't Networking just happen?

Everyone has some capability to Network with others, and we all recognise 'natural' Networkers. However, relying on innate capabilities:

• Fails to take Networking outside personal 'comfort zones'

• Does not engage all the individuals required for success

• Misses opportunities to create Networks of strategic value to an organisation

• Fails to maximise the value and effectiveness of existing Networks

• Can lead to 'natural' Networkers being overloaded with Networking responsibilities

Developing Networks is a particular challenge where individuals and groups have different reporting lines, working styles, values or cultures. Simply designing a Network is not enough. Success also depends on key individuals acquiring the skills to develop trusting relationships, and adopting and embedding practical working processes.

Face-to-face meetings are important but require travel. The telephone is also a key tool, but is now supplemented by other technologies.  Effective networking requires more than making contacts. That's just the start.  Value depends on building lasting relationships and commitments.  The diversity and reach of Networks that are developing globally is transforming economies and societies.  Today, mobile devices make it easier to keep in touch with information while on the move.  But this has resulted in 'information overload' and the neglect of interactive discussion.

Where is Networking most critical?

Critical applications for sectors and organisations include:

• Clusters: developing a common agenda from diverse organisational interests, priorities and values

• External stakeholders: ensuring productive dialogue with customers, suppliers, business partners, regulators, or policy-makers

• Business strategies: shaping or managing business transformation programmes, or campaigns for strategic influencing

• Innovation: bringing diverse groups together to develop innovative product concepts

Critical applications for groups and individuals include:

• High-performance teams: improving effectiveness across different media and formats, linking disparate parts of complex organisations and cuttting across 'silos

• Structured Networks: for collaborative working in priority areas (e.g. of practice, research or innovation)

• Structured Networks: as radical advances over traditional Committees and Panels

• Personal effectiveness: helping individuals to understand how best to get things done and with whom

• Career development and change: enabling individuals to extend their skill base and horizon

How do we help?

We help sectors, organisations, groups, and individuals to build, animate and sustain Structured Networks, to transform Working Groups and to acquire critical skills through Personal Networking Capability Training.

These services are discrete and stand-alone, but most powerful when they are fully integrated. For example, people may be effective Networkers but lack the structure needed to exploit its benefits; equally, a well-designed Network will fail if its members lack the necessary personal capabilities.

Our Networking case study describes an integrated programme of support provided for one company. Further case studies show that Networks and Networking are critical elements in many of our assignments.

Building, animating and sustaining Structured Networks

We understand how Networks differ from, but complement, traditional organisational forms. We know how to transform informal Networks into Structured Networks which maximise the value of Networking, both for the organisations and the participants. We transfer and embed the critical tools, skills, and behaviours which are essential for Networking, yet are often lacking in organisations today.

We provide practical services to animate networks - building trust among Network members and producing outputs which are valuable in themselves. We often deploy these through our Brain-Pool Workshops, which offer a 'step-change' in collaborative working over conventional workshops.

Our services to animate Networks, and generate tangible outputs from them include:

• Who's who: to visualise exactly who is who, who knows what, and who can do what

• Roadmapping: to characterise the present, consider trends, assess their implications, and develop strategies

• Lessons Learned: to identify and share lessons honestly and accurately, and to develop corrective plans

• Identifying and Sharing Good Practice: to raise standards and performance, especially in disparate groups

• Capability analysis and development: to map and rate capabilities, and explore and plan options for improvement

• Opportunity identification and specification: to focus attention on extracting value from emerging research and innovation

We use our own Toolkit to support Networks and Networking, selecting Tools relevant to the needs of the assignment. Models, Guidelines, Templates and Exercises are among the many Tools which we deploy.

Our services to support Structured Networks include, where necessary, the provision of independent and objective advice on good practice in using IT tools and platforms for knowledge-sharing and collaboration.

Transforming Working Groups

The concepts and tools which underlie effective Networking can be applied not only to create new Networks from scratch but also to reinvigorate 'old-style' committees, working groups and teams. Our service includes:

• Analysing and improving the overall architecture of the existing group
• Developing new organisational models
• Developing the necessary mindset, skills and ways of working needed by individuals within the group
• Providing practical tools to support the new models and ways of working

Personal Networking Capability Training

We work closely with organisations to assess, design, embed and support Personal Networking Capability through our Training Workshops. The key elements are:

• Pre-Workshop preparation: a questionnaire between participant and New Game-Plan plus participant/manager discussions.
• A highly-interactive Training Workshop: a mix of fresh concepts, role plays, individual practice exercises and group work
• Post-Workshop sessions: one-to-one coaching, mentoring and feedback, enabling individuals to review their experience and take forward their personal 'Game-plan for Networking'.

Our Workshops are relevant wherever people need to work together to agreed goals, whether within or between groups, organisations or sectors. We aim not only to develop personal capabilities but also to create the 'chemistry' for effective collaboration. The goals, contents, target groups and benefits are as follows:

Our Training Workshops have been widely deployed to build the skills and confidence needed for effective Networking. We have trained over 350 senior scientists, technologists and managers in diverse locations across America, Asia and Europe. We also run tailored training courses in 'Partnerships for Corporate Success' and 'Developing Effective Working Relationships'. Our post-Workshop support can also be extended into a full 'Mentoring Programme' to accelerate personal development and create a true 'learning organisation'.

Case studies

Case study - Structured Networks and Training to build Networking Capability
This case study illustrates the integrated provision of services for a global biosciences company to develop Structured Networks and support this with Networking Capability Training.

We have supported global companies and diverse sector groups in developing Structured Networks, and Personal Networking Capabililties. The functions covered have included R&D, Manufacturing and IT. A key challenge has been helping different functional groups to work more effectively together.

These engagements have always had a clear purpose: whether developing roadmaps, sharing good practice, learning lessons, or identifying opportunities for research and innovation. The following case studies provide examples. Others are described on our Case studies and Downloads pages.

Case study - Developing a Roadmap for the Regenerative Medicine Industry
We supported the Scottish Stem Cell Network in developing an industry-led collaborative Roadmap for the Regenerative Medicine Industry in Scotland. Our Brain-Pool Workshop brought 20 senior figures together to co-create a strategic Roadmap which considers not only scientific advances but also, critically, how viable business models can be created for manufacturing, scale-up and marketing of approved products.

Case study - Developing a Roadmap for Aquaculture in Europe
We supported the pan-European Aquagenome Network in developing a collaborative Roadmap to strengthen European Aquaculture through the application of genetics and genomics. Our Brain-Pool Workshop brought together 29 participants from academia and the aquaculture industry, from 12 different countries, to determine how best to exploit both existing and new technologies in this area.

Case-study - Good Practices for Collaborative working

We supported the UK Department for Business, Innovation & Skills and the Trade Association Forum in identifying good practices to enable better collaborative working between Trade Associations and Government bodies for policy development and implementation. 

Case study - 'Lessons Learned' from product development projects
We used a Brain-Pool Workshop to help a global biosciences company to articulate and tackle diverse problems which had affected several projects spread across several continents. The output was a set of 'Good Practices' to tackle carefully-defined problems, together with Action Plans to implement the 'Lessons Learned'. This work led directly to our support for a major programme of work for Mastering Risk.

Once the firm was the unit of Innovation: 3M, Pilkington, Ford, Hewlett Packard. Today...successful innovations increasingly depend on combining technology and know-how from disparate functions and geographies. It is not viable for a single organisation to own all of these. Even if it were possible initially, there is a never-ending need to add capabilities. Also, skills wither. Inter-organisational Networking is a solution. It is enabled by the advances in ICT. Nevertheless, making it work is a significant challenge.

From Tidd, Bessant & Pavitt (2002) 'Managing Innovation' (Wiley)