Cultivate connections to establish your platform.
Meet Sanjay. He’s a senior commercial lending manager in a bank, and he’s had a brilliant idea. Sanjay has observed that his bank is comfortable lending money to bigger businesses, but it’s unwilling to fund entrepreneurs. Fully aware that Apple and other major global businesses began as scrappy start-ups in need of capital, Sanjay decides that he wants to incubate an “entrepreneurial bank for entrepreneurs.”
But then Sanjay encounters a problem – a platform problem.
If you want to set your future-shaping idea in motion, you’ll need to find a way to make your voice heard. The best way to do this is to establish what the author calls a platform. What exactly is a platform? Imagine you’re giving a speech in public. You need a stage, right – a place where people can see you and hear you.
Well, your platform is your stage.
So how do you go about building a platform? Well, the first step is making connections. This involves identifying people who can help you facilitate your future-shaping vision, and then putting in the work to build a good relationship with them. If you don’t do this, your idea may never even get heard.
And that brings us back to Sanjay and his platform problem. He didn’t have any connections to help him make his idea a reality. While he knew the name of the CEO of the bank he worked for, he couldn’t name any of the company’s leaders at the next level down.
At this point, Sanjay wished he had invested more time in fostering a good relationship with his boss, with his boss’ boss, and with other influencers in the organization. It didn’t much matter that he had a great idea because he had no platform where he could share it.
So powering up your network early on is crucial to getting your ideas heard. Start by considering who you want to connect with and why – and what skills or connections you have that could benefit them. The key is to demonstrate that you can add value to this person. Then they might just help you get your idea off the ground.
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