Catarina's World

It’s beginning to seem to me that we are making the art of succeeding as a leader too complicated. There are umpteen theories that all have one thing in common – they work for some and for others they don’t.

Would Virgin group be what it is today if Richard Branson hadn't mastered the art of communication?

Most people who suddenly find themselves in a leadership position swiftly realize that the top position is completely different from what they imagined. And worse, there is no manual.

There is no school for becoming a successful leader. New leaders frequently feel lonely since there are fewer people privy to high level information. It can be overwhelming. So much so that the fact that a leader’s success depends on communication is frequently forgotten.

Richard Branson is an excellent example of a very successful leader who masters the art of communication. To the extent of jumping from high buildings to get the attention needed to promote a new Virgin venture. Don’t think anybody would dispute how successful he is. But the confusion caused by all these theories and schools of leadership actually led one guy straight out of university to have the audacity to make a comment in a discussion on Linkedin that he had a lot to teach Richard Branson. Indeed? What are the odds of he, or anybody else, becoming as successful a leader as Richard is? Pretty slim, I’d say considering that very few ever become as successful as Richard Branson is. And the success of Virgin is very much down to Richard’s exceptionally good ability to communicate.

The tasks of a leader is, simply put, to vision where a company is heading (strategies, future accomplishments, managing the destiny of the organisation and so forth), find the people the organisation needs to fulfil it’s vision, make choices and take decisions. Leaders also have to continuously serve, learn, correct, evaluate and motivate.

And how are you going to succeed with all that if you don’t master the art of communication ? Both internally and externally it’s the most powerful tool a leader has. It’s crucial to communicate with others about trends that affect the future of your business and stretch your thoughts by discussing your ideas with friends, associates and other great thinkers.

Ideas are an extremely powerful force. By communicating ideas to people you engage their minds and help them see new possibilities and new opportunities. Strong and evocative ideas energize people and incite action. As leaders, our ideas are important. Leaders need clear ideas and philosophies about how to win in the marketplace, how their organisation should operate and how to develop their people.

Leaders succeed because they are able to focus and deal with the 5% of issues that are crucial, build support and create followers, put out fires fast and finish what they started. How would that be possible without communicating? Especially since many decisions are instant so a non-communicative leader would fail miserably.

Successful leaders spend much more time communicating their decision than actually taking the decision. Lots of time is also spent on coaching and motivating others. And, tedious as it can be, repeating the decision to get maximum effect. But despite that most people wrongly believe leaders spend most of their time making decisions. Leaders who only take decisions will fail miserably since communication is the key ingredient. Not communicating enough is hence the main reason for failure and not, as many believe, that they were following the wrong theory. And don’t forget that leaders live in the future so the more your communication enlightens you about tomorrow the better a leader you will be!

(Photo: Flickr linniekin)

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“The most successful leader of all is the one who sees a picture not yet actualised. He sees the things which belong in his present picture but which are not yet there” US political scientist Mary Parker Follett once wrote. And she’s right because if you don’t know where you are going and can’t see it, how are you going to get there?

What does your vision of the future look like – what's the image? When you make colleagues travel with you, what will they see?

Followers actually want a leader with a compelling vision of the future and research shows they respond to a leader who can articulate a vision reflecting their own aspirations. It needs to be engaging, capture their hearts and get them to pay attention. Those who hear it should want to be a part of it.

So what does your vision of the future look like – what’s the image? When you make colleagues travel with you, what will they see? Will they be able to visualize it, remember and make an effort to achieve it?
Great leaders provide inspiring visions and passionately believe they can make a difference by inspiring people to achieve more than they ever dreamed possible. You must be able to provide a clear picture of a change beyond the horizon with a realistic image of what could become. Only then can you with your attitude get people enthusiastic and passionate about playing their role in reaching your destination.

Once all your colleagues have a vision of your aims and goals you can set out to reach them. It is a bit like the old saying: “If you don’t know where you’re going, then for sure you won’t get there.” Warren Bennis says of vision: To choose a direction, an executive must first have developed a mental image of the possible and desirable future state of the organisation.

The best way to impact others is to convey your vision in a dramatic and enduring way. If you bore them, or they don’t really believe in it, the impact will be next to none. A company who buys the grudging compliance of its staff is practically not going anywhere while enthusiastic and participating employees are a crucial aspect of making a vision come true.

A vision should ideally be of long term challenging goals. The odds of realizing the vision may actually not be more than fifty percent, but the company must believe it can. So aim for something worthwhile that will make people stretch themselves to succeed. If not they will not make that extra effort essential for success.

You need to get to the stage where executives and managers can live the visions and missions, be seen doing so and constantly communicate them to their colleagues. And chances of that happening without a mental image is slim. It’s best is to create a noble vision that elevates the energy, enthusiasm and passion of everyone in the company.

And don’t forget to make everybody see a benefit in enabling the vision to come true. There’s no need to worry about laying out the vision in details, it’s the direction that counts. But do remember that a good vision will evolve over time. Having a vision can be a catalyzing force in our lives, but don’t expect to travel a linear path from point A to point B to realize it because no matter how good the vision it has to adapt to an ever changing world.

(Photo. PhotoXpress – Olaru Radian-Alexandru)

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Now the permanent stewards of the world economy, will G20 keep the momentum going by improving the global economic regime that has been crafted over the years?

Will G20 leaders from developing countries manage to make their colleagues from the West realize that in order for the world economy to work properly, there need to be advantages for the poor as well?

G20 has come a long way – the new kid on the block in 2004 is now the leader of the pack. It started as an alliance to bring democracy to world trade at the WTO talks in Cancun and has become the main permanent body in the world responsible for economic co-operation, meeting annually at the leaders level

Hopefully G20 will not forget the importance of world trade. Will G20 again, manage to have an impact on world trade? The WTO trade talks in Cancun, as you may remember, collapsed as a result of G20 demanding fairer trade. If so, what strategies will be deployed to negotiate a trade deal that benefits not only multinationals in the North but also the poor in the South? How will G20 make the world focus on making international trade rules fairer? What steps will be taken to decrease rich countries protectionist policies?

G20 is now the key player on the global scene which, at least in theory, enables it to provide the conditions for developing countries to embark on peace, prosperity and pluralism. We have come a long way from G8 to G20 and it will go further. The developing world, representing four-fifth of humanity, is now much better represented on the global scene.

Poverty does not cause terrorism – but it causes frustration and resentment that help foster the kind of atmosphere in which extremist groups can thrive. A much better, and cheaper, way of defeating extremists than war on terrorism would be to give developing countries the possibility to trade out of poverty.

Trade has been shown to be the indispensable means for poverty reduction and growth. There also seems to be a close correlation between a country engaging in open trade and ultimately embracing democracy. With 40 percent of humanity living on less than $2 a day and approximately a billion living under military style dictatorships often engaged in civil war and genocide, we should care a lot. The most striking example of the benefits of a trade oriented economy versus a closed, self-sufficient one is the two Koreas. At the end of the Korean war in 1952 they were both extremely poor. And how North and South Korea have developed since then under their different systems is well known.

What will G20 do to craft a fairer world trade order? Most Westerners would like a fair global economic system. If, for instance, the issue of access to life-saving Aids drugs were put to a vote, the overwhelming majority would not support the position of Western pharmaceutical companies. The power of special interests is high – but will it still be if trade moves up the political agenda in G20? And once that has happened, will people in the West agree to anything that asks the poorest people in the world – the billions living on less than $2 a day – to pay the price? Will G20 leaders from developing countries manage to make their colleagues from the West realize that in order for the world economy to work properly, there need to be advantages for the poor as well? That’s the big question isn’t it ,and my hope is that they will succeed so that we can finally unlock the benefits of the world economy for all.

(Photo:www.flickr.com/photos/londonsummit/href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/londonsummit)

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The day I stop learning I’m dead. And even when that day comes I will not know everything there is to know.

The day I stop learning I'm dead.

Nobody does, even Einstein said he is not an expert on anything, merely curious. Did you for instance know that sweating leaves produce electricity? Neither did I until a moment ago when I came across that revelation.

Everybody has problems, the richest man in the world as well as the poorest. It’s just a question of what problems. The important thing though is what we learn from them. The easiest is to blame everybody else but that approach will just assure that the same problem happens over and over again. The smart, and interesting, way is to take responsibility for what happened, learn and move on.

In Saudi Arabia you learn a lot. KSA is, in my opinion, the most interesting country in the world because almost every day something happens that you have never experienced before. Life in the kingdom hence enriches you enormously, provided of course, that you are not stuck in your ways or intolerant. We are all different, and that’s what makes life beautiful. How boring it would be if we were all alike.

If you have a curious mind and constantly learn you can succeed with anything. Don’t know how many times I have been asked to do something I have never done before in different parts of the world. So I just found out, learnt and did it.

Sometimes I think people are afraid of learning and developing. It’s not only laziness but also easier to take the option of doing nothing since, they could, after all, fail. And society sometimes reward people for towing the line as opposed to learning and developing. It’s not unusual that even top positions are filled with executives who will just preserve the status quo. That’s all very well, but how will companies develop with that kind of mind-set? Sure control is important but surely not at the expense of the company learning, developing and improving results? And how can they do that unless they start looking at new and different options? Besides I don’t understand the contradiction since I have always followed company policy and at the same time learnt, developed and improved results.

For me acquiring new knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, preferences and understanding is vital. To be broad-minded and curious is probably one of the key, if not the key, aspect of life. And how would that be possible without constantly learning? I know more today than I did yesterday and will continue to do so for the rest of my life. I really enjoy living and am not afraid of dying but anything in between I’m simply not interested in. And isn’t that how we end up leading our lives if we stop learning with all that entails? Or maybe Oscar Wilde had a point when he said: “Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching”? Joke aside, at least that’s how we sometimes felt when we were at school.

(Photo: PhotoXpress giuseppe porzani)

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You can have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call ‘failure’ is not the falling down, but the staying down, Mary Pickford once said and it’s so true. And only you can do it. If you wait for others to lift you up, not only will you be disappointed – you will stay down.

Get back in the saddle again and look at your problem in ways that will allow a solution.

Now that thing are beginning to turn it’s time to make an effort and make sure your life and/or business benefits. Many of you actually ask me to write more since you are feeling better after what I write. Makes me wonder if you feel good long enough to get back in the saddle again? Because you simply have to. These are difficult times and it’s essential that you realise that the problem isn’t you and get the courage to move on. And it has to come from within you. I appreciate that it’s hard but it’s in times like these that you separate “winners from loosers”.

Being positive is crucial and to look at your problem in ways that will allow a solution. Maybe you have to look at possibilities you never considered before? But no matter what, it will be a question of persevering until you succeed, and not allow yourself to feel down. And don’t forget that we are often faced with great opportunities disguised as insoluble problems.

How creative are you? Ever thought about the fact that creative people are “problem friendly”? Don’t get me wrong, nobody is delighted to deal with problems but now is the time for you to roll up your creative sleeves and find opportunities to improve your life. How? The solutions will be different for each of you. We all have problems that need to be solved every day. Even if it’s just that we got dirty and have to wash. There’s no running away from problems since everybody has them. If someone says they don’t, they are simply not telling the truth. So the important thing is to try to find solutions that will enrich your life.

Don’t discard the ideas you have, value them instead and take the challenge of developing them. If you are creative you will be persistent and optimistic until you succeed. If you, or others around you, dismiss your ideas too early you will never get anywhere. Many of the ideas that I have had would in the beginning have appeared crazy to others, but nobody called them crazy after I succeeded. What would have happened if I had talked about them to early? Maybe their criticism would have killed off my ideas? Be flexible as well. The fact that you are developing one idea doesn’t prevent you from working on other ones as well. In fact, I think you should work on several possibilities at the moment because so much is changing in our world. Covering your back is always a good idea. Have noticed that when I don’t, things go wrong.

Still stuck in the rut? How about re-framing your situation by looking at it from different angles? It has the power to change your entire perception of the problem and finding new solutions.

And always, always remember that the only thing that’s certain in life is that everything is uncertain. That’s a fundamental fact of life and you have to get the strength from within to handle it, because whatever happens to you in life, it’s up to you how you perceive it. Positive or negative? Your choice. Or as Lincoln once put it “You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves”. Remember that failure happens on the road to success, which may be just a step away.

(Photo: Photo Xpress)

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The energy that creates great ideas also creates errors. Most truly creative and successful people have hence also had setbacks, frequently huge ones where they lost almost everything they had.

Be prepared to fail, on average, 3.1 times before striking it big.

The more people I get to know and the more biographies I read, the more convinced I am that we have to be prepared to fail miserably if we are going to achieve anything worth-while in this world.

The difference between success and failure is really minute. We have to trust our instincts and try,since if we don’t, there is no way we will ever succeed.

If we never fail it means that our goal wasn’t big enough. And if the goal isn’t big enough there is no risk involved. Trying out safe ideas are neither creative nor innovative and no biography will be written about you if that’s how you lead your life.

Creativity can be described as letting go of certainties, someone once said and that is so true since the only thing that’s certain in life is that there are no certainties. So it depends on what you want out of life. Or as George Bernard Shaw put it: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world – the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man”.

(Photo: Isabelle Barthe, Photo Xpress)

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Negative events have dominated the news for a couple of years. So now when the wind’s turning let’s capitalise on it and be optimistic. How about we all make it our new years resolution to be optimistic? What have we got to lose? After all without hope there’s just time. And if time is all that’s left in the world we will be in the sorry state of just killing time. So let’s start a new chapter and make 2010 The Year of Optimism!

Let's all make a chain of optimism around the world and make sure 2010 will be remembered as The Year of Optimism!

Leaders owe it to their followers to spread optimism without excluding reality. We need to inspire and give people not only hope but resilience. What’s going to happen to your company, your job or you if you are not optimistic and keep making intelligent attempts to succeed?

Sure we have to be clear about the challenges we face due to external factors. But we also have to look not only at what mistakes we did but also at what we did right. Let’s find new ways of doing things. Tough times after all does provide new opportunities to succeed.

Now is not the time to throw in the towel but to have the courage to move on to pastures new. Highlight the good things companies and people are doing now despite the tough times.

Look at how the recession is affecting the business, both positively and negatively. Don’t forget your customers and their buying habits and how you can serve their current needs better. When you are able to provide an equally good, or even better, service during a recession, your customers will never forget you.

Adversity does bring opportunities as well as positive changes if you let it. Don’t be negative and overcautious since that will squash all possibilities of turning this recession into a success. Having said that I should add the importance of not promising something you can not deliver. Much better to undersell and overdeliver!

It’s possible that hard times are here to stay for quite some time yet, but you still have to be optimistic. Sooner or later the tide will turn and you have to look at possibilities instead of concentrating on what can’t be done and being too cautious to take a calculated risk. If you do you will be left behind when good times are here again.

Pessimists actually have a 19 percent higher mortality rate than optimists, according to a Mayo Clinic study. So let’s do things that make us happy and be optimistic in 2010. That will make us more motivated to make a difference and improve the performance of our company, our work, our lives and altogether have an impact on the performance of the whole world.

Let’s make 2010 the year when we all join forces, are optimistic and aim for the stars!  The worst that can happen is that we will have even better health, more friends and better quality of life.

Wishing you all A Fantastic New Year!   2010 – THE YEAR OF OPTIMISM

Photo: PhotoXpress Peter Barrett

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If you overdo the contemplating part you will never get anywhere.

Or worse acted upon to the detriment of not only the company but society as a whole. A contributing factor to the current banking crisis was academic people without enough experience having theories that unfortunately didn’t work out in reality. Confusius was right when he said that life is really simple but we make it complicated. And writing theoretical reports instead of acting is a very good example of that.

Sometimes reports are produced to avoid doing something that companies know has to be done, but really want to avoid. The reports then show share holders that they are doing something and become an excuse for not taking action until conditions are perfect. And they never will be. Passive companies are not going to be winners but active ones are. The only thing you will achieve by postponing action is losing time and money.

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes reports are needed to get optimal results. But for the majority of businesses in this world, does it really make sense to spend a lot of money on writing theoretical reports? What happened to common sense? Most things are actually pretty basic. How much money do you need to bring in to make profit? How will you get that kind of revenue? In most cases you don’t need to write a report to determine that. For most businesses a few meetings, discussions and agreement on a plan of action is sufficient. You swiftly notice when things aren’t working out as planned and then you just change tactics. It has actually happened that I have told companies that what they need is not a report on how to do it, but simply act to get more customers and increase sales. You can argue that I should have produced an expensive report instead of being honest, but you don’t keep clients that way. If you make them pay for what they do not need, it’s just a question of how long it takes before you loose them.

Maybe it’s easy for me since I started my career in journalism and know how to get the information I need and then act to get results. And the same applies to business, I find the information I need, adapt it to the situation at hand and then get in touch with the people targeted directly. Always get access to minimum 35 percent of the people I contact. Frequently much more.

Writing reports is a Western phenomena that has unfortunately spread. Don’t know how many times I have heard about conglomerates, for instance in the Middle East, that have hired an academic to write reports. They mostly spend a lot of money on it but the reports conclusions are seldom acted upon. Wouldn’t it have been better to simply take action to improve, for instance, sales, acquiring new customers, developing products and collecting money? Doing that you would also bring in money.

Start-ups that spend months writing detailed analysis on how to best do what they are going to do frequently run out of money and have to close or, worse, go bankrupt.

Have always applied action style leadership to get results. In business I like to surround myself with action-oriented people. Naturally I do contemplate and analyse but my main focus is on action and I do believe that’s where we need to be in this world to achieve something. If you overdo the contemplating part you will never get anywhere. And how long will you be in business then? Every day thousands of good ideas are buried because people are afraid to act upon them. Got a good idea? Then act upon it!

(Photo: cpask Photo Xpress)

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It seems to me that a few bankers have managed to hijack and contaminate the American Dream. To them it means looking after number one at the expense of others, which is as far from the true meaning as you can get. And the price for that is being paid by Middle America with their drastically reduced spending power.

Americans demanding big banks and Wall Street stop spending millions in taxpayer dollars to lobby against financial reform.

How long will it take before those millions of middle Americans hit by the crisis get their spending power back? And what will happen to the US economy in the meantime?

Let’s face it ,we need to get Middle America up and running again since middle class spending power is the backbone of an economy. You only need to look at Africa in the past to see what happens without it. But now with African middle classes growing, and spending more, their economies are improving.

Can not understand how those US bankers can live with themselves. Not least since many of them attend church on a regular basis. The bible obviously doesn’t have any influence on them but neither, it seems, has the materialistic point of view of wanting their children to grow up in a thriving economy. Instead short term thinking seems to have completely taken over their entire lives.

“We need to put an end to misleading and dishonest practices of banks and institutions regarding credit and debit cards or mortgage, auto and payday loans. Americans don’t choose to be victimized by mysterious fees, changing terms, and pages and pages of fine print”, president Obama said recently. And he is right since much of the blame for this recession can be put on “the irresponsibility of large financial institutions on Wall Street that gambled on risky loans and complex financial products, seeking short-term profits and big bonuses with little regard for long-term consequences.

And since neither going to church nor materialistic common sense seem to have any impact on Wall Street, I unfortunately believe the only way to change their behaviour is to legislate. To avoid a repeat of last year’s meltdown that put the US economy on the brink of collapse, the House of Representatives approval last Friday of the biggest changes in financial regulation since the Great Depression is most likely a step in the right direction?

It’s lamentable that the only way of stopping Wall Street looking after number one at the expense of others seems to be legislation But systematic risks in the economy and dangerous financial products need to be policed somehow. And to get the middle classes up and running again a financial watchdog agency is most likely essential.

One American commenting on Reuters spoke for many Americans when he said: “A Consumer Financial Protection Agency is just the start of the regulatory oversight this country needs to put in place to get Wall Street back under control. The recent behavior and excesses of Wall Street are an embarassment and shame on this country. Anyone working for an investment/banking firm who has benefitted either directly or indirectly from the Big Bail and who is making over $500,000 this year needs to be turned out of their homes, their homes and possessions sold or donated and tax them at the rate the Europeans are taxing their financial criminals this year. Wall Street has become a blight and cancer on the landscape and needs to be brought under control. Middle America is no longer buying their schtick. Even their bought and paid for minions in the US Congress are finding it impossible to peddle their lies. “

As far as I’m concerned innovation and development should be encouraged as well as driving the economy forward into another exciting new decade of success. But risky schemes that threaten the entire economy should not.

Since Wall Street doesn’t seem to learn from their mistakes, change and move on, something needs to be done to protect the middle classes. Otherwise we will have to be content with their spending power being reduced on a continuos basis while their counterparts in Asia and the Middle East increasingly spend more and more money. Doesn’t Wall Street understand that such a development will long term be the end of the American dream? And, worse from their point of view, make sure that “Wall Street” moves to the other side of the world, leaving most US bankers behind.

(Photo: Flickr – SEIU International)

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Would you walk up to a stranger at an event and demand something from him? And if you did, what would the result be? Yes, most likely failure. So why do so many people think they can do that online where chances of succeeding are even slimmer?

Would you recommend a stranger? Or send him money? Obviously not, but why are so many people trying to get others to do so on social media? Don’t they understand that that’s not what networking is all about? Simply cannot understand why so many people are trying to jump the gun like that? They only annoy people and make sure their new connections don’t want to have anything to do with them again.

Don’t know how many times I have started a discussion on Linkedin only for members of the group to comment by pitching for business, even leaving their contact details. One man actually posted his CV as a comment in a discussion on branding for success. Would have understood if it was a discussion about jobs, but branding? On top of it he was nothing to write home about. He desperately needed branding, but obviously didn’t even realize that.

Have had considerable success in networking in real life. Leaders all over the world have agreed to do what I wanted them to do – sometimes even on the spot.

Successful networking is in most cases about building up a long term relationship. If you are not prepared to do so, don’t network. One lawyer who sent me an invite to connect immediately asked me to recommend him to my connections. When I told him that wasn’t possible since I don’t know him he got upset and said connecting on Linkedin was all about getting more business. Not only are people like that annoying, how can they respect someone who actually recommend them when they haven’t even met? Only a person with no judgement whatsoever would be stupid enough to recommend a stranger.

If you recommend strangers online you will lose credibility, people will lose respect for you and I actually believe your business friends will start avoiding you since you will be associated with the negative side of networking.

To try and network swiftly is in most cases impossible and actually gives networking a bad name, which is a shame. How you connect will have a huge impact on building a relationship. But too many people are so much in a hurry they forget to take the other person into account. Pity because they really shoot themselves in the foot by looking after “number one” the way they do.

But then again, some people really go too far when it comes to building up relationships with people they connect with online. Am really pleased about how many people want to connect with me because of Catarina’s World. But far too many start writing long daily e-mails to me and expect the same from me in return, which unfortunately is simply impossible since it would be a full time job. Again, all they think about is what they want without even wondering how many people have the time to exchange e-mails like that with strangers. Pity because it means the wonderful success of my blog has a negative side to it that wouldn’t exist if people understood how to network.

You can get fantastic results from networking if you have patience to do it properly. In real life you agree with the person you approach at an event that you will contact him. You do and once they understand who you are, what it’s all about and decide it’s in their interest you succeed. If you try to push them to quickly you will fail. So why should networking be any different online?

As far as I’m concerned networking online is building up long term online relationships with interesting people. The more the merrier and discussing with people from every corner of the world is not only fascinating but you also learn a lot. And that’s what life, and networking, is all about. Breathing down people’s necks to get a job or more business is a nuisance that simply doesn’t work.

People observe you online and in the future some of your connections may deliver jackpot. Much more than you ever bargained for. But not if you try to make them do all kinds of things for you before they have even made up their mind about you , much less decided you are/have what they are looking for. Be professional, show respect and don’t ask others to do what you wouldn’t do for them and networking online may become a very positive experience for you. And never, ever forget that networking is not all about you and what you want.

(Photo: Blaine Stiger, Photoxpress)

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