FOR years I've been urging our company's executives to 'meet five new people a year'. It's become something of a corporate mantra that I take very seriously. I even insist that executives report on their 'five new people' at senior-level meetings.
As a company grows, many of its top executives inevitably become so burdened with administrative activities or servicing their existing group of customers that they forget to burst out of their routines and creatively seek new contacts. At least, that's the excuse that I was hearing from some of our people.
I don't think the concept actually kicked into our people's consciousness until I wrote a memo a few years ago listing the 26 'new people' I had met the previous year. The majority of these 26 names were busy chief executive officers whose lives would continue quite smoothly whether or not they ever met me.
My point, I concluded in the memo, was not to impress our people with the new additions to my contact diary but to remind them that, with all the other things I was doing (including managing them!), I had made time to see these people.
I've always thought that if you want to understand people's priorities, don't ask them to write them down. Look at how they behave. Look at the activities for which they make time.
I've known people who would drop everything to take care of a minor emergency for their number one client. They might not be willing to give up five minutes to return a stranger's phone call, but they'll devote five hours to clearing up a niggling detail for their top priority.