REID HOFFMAN Network Intelligence: Your
Company Can’t Thrive Without It

My name is Reid Hoffman
and I’m an entrepreneur and investor. Hi!

I cofounded LinkedIn in 2003.
Today we have more than 300,000,000 members around the world.

What was the last really
hard problem you solved at work?

Here’s an example from my
career. ! When I worked at PayPal, we had to figure out how to beat a competitor: BillPoint.

And they were backed by
Wells Fargo and owned by our most important business partner: eBay.

To beat BillPoint, we needed
to outthink them.

I asked all the members
of my team to talk with friends, business partners, and even BillPoint employees to get as much market intelligence as they could.

We found out two important
things.

1. BillPoint thought its relationship
with Wells Fargo mattered most to customers.

2. …and eBay users (the
customers) didn't care about BillPoint’s bank relationships. They just wanted an easy to use product.

Armed with that knowledge, we
focused on ease of use, among other things. We beat BillPoint. eBay ended up buying us for $1.5 billion.

What’s your current challenge? Here’s
what most people do when problem solving. ! They schedule a meeting with all the smart people at their company who might have ideas.

That’s a good first step
— talk to people.

The most valuable professional information
is often in other people’s heads.

People — not Google, not
books, not blog posts — have the information you need to solve tough problems.

People can offer advice that’s
time- sensitive. ! People often know things that are not yet public on Google. People can tailor advice exactly to your situation.

Great information and insight from
the people you know can be a significant competitive advantage. ! We call it…

NETWORK
INTELLIGENCE.

When it comes to knowledge
in a highly networked era… who you know is often more valuable than what you’ve read.

Now, when you are facing
a truly hard problem, you should also look outward.

There are more smart people
in the world who do not work at your company than the total # of smart people who work at your company. ! So look beyond your office.

Your team is bigger than
you think. If you’re a manager… Your team becomes a whole lot bigger. If you do…

If you have 5 people
working for you and they each have 75 different contacts outside the company… The network intel team is actually 375 people strong. (It’s even bigger if you count 2nd and 3rd degree connections.)

CEOs tend to be big
networkers — they talk to a lot of people in the industry at large.

…But they forget their employees
can do the same.

When your employees share what
they learn from the people in their network (about technologies, competition, talent), they help you solve key business challenges faster.

An externally networked workforce is
critical to an innovative company.

It’s also great for your
employees’ careers. By helping them strengthen their external network, you’re improving their long-term career prospects.

So encourage them to engage
their network on a regular basis.

HERE’S
HOW.

Ask your employees: ! “Who
are the 3 smartest people you know who don’t work at our company”? 1.

Empower your employees to network
with those smart people on company time... And the company dime. 2.

HubSpot’s Learning Meals program allows
employees to expense meals with interesting people in the industry so long as the employees share what they learned.

“My one regret is that
we didn’t put the Learning Meals policy in place from the start at HubSpot. - Dharmesh Shah Founder and CTO

Encourage your employees to be
active on social media. 3.

4. Celebrate employees who have
large Twitter followings and lots of LinkedIn connections.

For their annual conference, HubSpot
wanted to bring in a big name speaker like Arianna Huffington. ! To do so, they tapped the power of their employees’ networks.

The organizers made a list
of employee Twitter accounts and went through them to find the employee with the strongest connection to Huffington. ! That employee reached out and Huffington quickly accepted the invitation.

! ! HubSpot employees also
have two times the average number of LinkedIn connections, and those employees share, comment, or like updates at eight times the average rate.

! ! HubSpot attracts two
times the average number of candidates for the job opportunities it posts on LinkedIn. ! ! The payoff to a having a workforce well connected on LinkedIn?

THE ALLIANCE NETWORK INTELLIGENCE is
a part of between company and employee

The employee’s career is transformed.
! A strong professional network is one of the most important career assets a person can have. As a company, you’re helping employees build their networks. THE ALLIANCE

The company is transformed. !
Network intelligence from all employees helps managers make better strategic decisions. THE ALLIANCE

An Alliance will help you
recruit, manage, and retain great people to your company. And solve key problems faster. Everybody wins.

Get the book today ▸
Learn more in my book with Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh: The Alliance. ! We show you how to set up network intelligence programs at your company.

Get the book today ▸
And we show how these programs help you solve challenges, and ultimately help you recruit, manage, and retain amazing talent at your company.