A former colleague reached out to me the other day to talk career. It was a great discussion and I left that phone call and subsequent emails asking "why don't I talk more often with that person"? As with most simple-sounding questions, I started thinking that the answer is more complicated than meets the eye. At the end, I believe it is OK to intermittently connect with people in your network and the key objective should be more around building as broad a network as possible than necessarily being the most active communicator.
I am a big fan of analogies and there is a theory that the universe is constantly expanding since the Big Bang. In this respect, things are constantly changing positions relative to one another as forces, understood and not understood, influence everything. I like this analogy because I think it is very appropriate when thinking about how we interact with the different people we have met throughout our professional careers.
Making connections is important in life and in business. Keeping them is more difficult. As time wears on, and more connections are made, it becomes more difficult to maintain those existing networks. The other thing that I often forget is that as much as I see my career and life impacting my own time and ability to keep in touch with my network, everyone else is going through their own challenges as well.
Whether it is rationalization or not, I advocate making impressions in those first interactions - whether it is a very important stakeholder in your business team or a vendor looking to sell something. Take the time to just make that initial contact - even if it is to say that you're not interested in buying now - and keep that person in your network.
You never know when you might need each other in the future.
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