With all eyes on the Rugby World Cup and our hopes of victory for the All Blacks, most of the country are in a competitive frame of mind. Often with networking and business it’s easy to see things in terms of competition; who’s doing best and winning in terms of sales or growth in a competitive marketplace.
This is just one way to look at things; the All Blacks collaborate as a team after all. Yes competition is a part of business but another side of business focuses on collaboration. Recently the collaborative side of networking was highlighted by a special event put on by one of our Wellington Regional Director Consultants. Benn Milne ran a very successful networking evening for BNI and Venus members. Venus is an organisation that focuses on connecting women in business throughout New Zealand.
Benn felt the chapters he was overseeing could do with more women members and reached out to someone in the Venus network to see if they could collaborate on a shared event. They were very receptive to the idea and the two groups decided to not only share an event, but also have two speakers (one from each networking organisation) collaborate on a presentation.
About 50 people attended the evening event and it was highly successful. They had around 45 minutes of open networking in a relaxed café environment with drinks and nibbles before the two speakers gave their presentations. The theme on scarcity vs abundance with the idea being that businesses need to take the abundance approach and see collaboration as something that benefits all those that participate in it.
Other business groups will have their own niche and there is space for all sorts of groups in the community. In the case of BNI and Venus this event led to an expanding of networks and new referrals. Why not reach a hand out to other organisations that may be operating in your community?
Perhaps the Chamber of Commerce, local business association or another group would be open to collaborating with your chapter (or group of chapters) to put on an event. Be proactive and follow the excellent initiative shown by Benn. By positively working together we can all share in the growth and abundance that businesses can generate.
