One of my favorite sayings is, “Life is an open-book test.” It is not important that you know everything, either in life or in business. But it is important to know where to find the answers you need. If you have set up your web presence correctly, chances are that even if you don’t know the people personally who could answer your questions, you know how to get in touch with them—through work contacts, mutual friends and associations. This network is the beginning of your knowledge base.
A knowledge base is the network of people you are connected to whose expertise you can draw from, and whose ideas and actions you respect. Most of us make decisions in our careers based on a combination of good and bad advice from the people we know. If we are lucky, we figure out pretty quickly which advice is which, and correct our mistakes before things get out of hand. So the first step in broadening your knowledge base is to take stock of your existing circle of friends and colleagues, and notice which have given consistently good advice. Make a point of thanking these remarkable people for their expertise, and stay in touch with them as best you can.
One of the obvious ways to expand our circle of wise friends is to get to know the people our current wise friends admire and like to hang out with. This is one of the great benefits of actual face-to-face social networking, but it is not always possible. While there is no real substitute for relationships cultivated in person, there are three very good ways that you can use the social web to much the same effect. If you are not yet growing your knowledge base online, here is how to start. [click to continue…]
