Strategy also means choosing where not to be.
Updated: Oct 19
I've been thinking about how we decide where to put our money, our time, and especially our presence.
In recent years, the supply of environments created to bring people closer together has grown significantly. Clubs, communities, closed groups, councils, meetings, dinners, retreats, trips, condominiums, experiences, and a myriad of spaces that promise something that is, in fact, valuable: access.
In many cases, these environments are excellent and fulfill exactly what they set out to do. They bring interesting people together, create opportunities for conversation, and shorten distances that might otherwise take years to overcome.
That's not the point.
What I've been wondering is whether, before investing in getting closer to certain people, we understand well enough why we want to be close to them.
Is there a difference between having access and building a relationship?
There is an important difference between having access to someone and building a relationship with someone. The first can be bought, organized, or facilitated. The second cannot. A relationship requires time, context, recurrence, trust, and a certain willingness to allow things to mature, without every conversation needing to immediately justify the investment made to reach it.
Perhaps some of the frustration surrounding networking today stems from this confusion. We enter certain environments with very high expectations about what proximity should produce. We make the investment, arrive at the room, meet the people we'd like to meet, and, almost without realizing it, begin to measure the value of that space by the amount of business it can generate. When this doesn't happen at the expected speed, the feeling arises that the environment didn't work, that the people are closed off, or that we need to look for another room.
And there's a cost to that, one that's rarely factored in. It's not just the annual fee or the airfare. It's the night away from home, the energy spent always being available, always interesting, always attentive to those arriving. It's returning from a crowded place with the strange feeling of having spoken to many people and not having truly connected with any of them. This exhaustion has a different nature. It stems from being present without being fully present.
But perhaps the question started off on the wrong foot.
Instead of just asking who will be there, perhaps we also need to ask what we are trying to build there. Is there a connection? Is there a conversation worth developing? Do we have something genuine to add to that environment? Is there a reason for those people to want to continue a conversation with us after the meeting is over?
This changes the logic quite a bit.
Because a meaningful professional relationship rarely begins the moment one person realizes the economic value of the other. Often it starts earlier, in a good conversation, in a presentation given without immediate ulterior motives, in a shared idea, in a timely act of help, in a perceived affinity, or simply in the recurring encounters where, over time, one notices how that person thinks, works, and positions themselves.
Why are we so eager to turn a meeting into a business deal?
I have the impression that the business world has become very efficient at creating opportunities for meetings and, at the same time, very eager to transform those meetings into business deals. And I believe that's precisely where things go wrong.
When every conversation needs to produce something, we start listening less. We become more attentive to the opportunity than to the person, more interested in identifying who can open a door than in understanding the environment we are entering. Not necessarily out of opportunism. Often it's just pressure.
There are companies to support, goals to meet, teams depending on us, and a constant feeling that we should be making better use of every opportunity that comes our way.
Perhaps this is also a consequence of the burden of carrying too much at once and feeling that one cannot waste any opportunity. But this burden, carried into every room, tends to push away precisely what we came to seek.
Therefore, I don't think the answer is simply "network in a more human way." That would be simplifying an issue that, for me, is much more strategic.
Where is it worthwhile not to be?
Perhaps the issue is developing better criteria for deciding where to invest our presence. Not every room needs to be our room. Not every community needs to become our community. Not every interesting person needs to turn into a strategic contact. And not every opportunity for access needs to be seized simply because it seems rare.
Strategy also means choosing where not to be.
And choosing where not to be is also a form of self-care. Every presence that doesn't make sense occupies space that could be for your rest, your family, or the few relationships that truly sustain you.
Why would that person want to stay close to me?
That's the other question, and I find it more interesting. It forces us to look less at access and more at relevance. Less at the room and more at what we bring into it. And relevance doesn't necessarily mean having the best company, the highest position, or the most impressive presentation. It can mean having a broad repertoire, knowing how to listen, connecting with people, asking a good question, sharing something useful, or simply being someone reliable over time.
All of this makes me think that perhaps we are investing too much in proximity and too little in relationships. Not because the environments are wrong, but because no environment can single-handedly do the work that falls to us.
A club can organize the meeting.
A community can organize the conversation.
A dinner can bring two people side by side.
A trip can lead to hours of togetherness.
All of this helps.
But there's one part that remains impossible to outsource: transforming proximity into trust.
When I think about the professional relationships that have mattered most to me over the years, I realize that many of them didn't start with a very clear commercial intention. Some relationships took months or years to produce anything that could be called a business deal. Others never produced any business at all, and yet they were extremely important for the exchange, the knowledge, the conversations, and the people who became part of my life.
This doesn't mean romanticizing professional relationships or pretending that economic interests don't exist. They do exist and are part of the game. What we perhaps need to recover is the ability to build relationships that don't begin exclusively with the question: "what can this person do for me?".
What's the point of this Tuesday share?
Before making your next investment to be close to certain people, it might be worth taking a closer look at what you're trying to build.
Does this environment make sense for your company's current situation? Are these really the people you want to build relationships with? Do you have time to truly be present? Are you attending because you have a clear intention, or because you feel that important people are there and therefore you should be too? And perhaps most importantly: have you returned from these places feeling lighter or more tired?
There isn't necessarily one right answer. But there are more conscious decisions to be made.
You don't necessarily need to invest more to meet more people. Perhaps you need to invest better in the relationships that truly make sense to build.
And perhaps save a little more of your presence for those who are already close.
Have a great Tuesday!
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