Achieving personal success has never been more challenging than it is today.  Unemployment is high, creating a highly competitive landscape for obtaining a new opportunity for which most seem to be given to those with unparalleled networks.   Somehow, these people know how to reach right into an organization and grab the job, raise or promotion long before it’s ever known to exist. So is networking the key to success? 

One of the biggest challenges to achieving our dreams is that the huge successes we are bombarded with on a daily basis have forced a mindset that big leaps have to be made for us to feel successful.  Social Networking is one of those huge successes.  If we look at Facebook, LinkedIn and other top social networking sites, they seem to do one thing very well; that is, they create a good stage for collaboration.  These sites aren’t successful because they create tons of joy and happiness in people’s lives.  They are successful because they bring access to a lot of people in one single platform which has phenomenal marketing potential.  The collaborative nature itself is extremely valuable, if only because it houses so much potential. 

Compare this to the success of the individual user in one of these sites.  Let’s say you are networking with LinkedIn and spend a lot of time connecting with people you don’t know seeking that next opportunity that will help you to take a step up on the success ladder.  You send out invitation after invitation with minimal results.  That’s because this approach is slightly better than other mass marketing techniques in that the return on these activities is usually a very small single digit percentage. 

I’m not trying to downplay the value of networking or collaboration.  I think we need to tap into the idea more.  Even the individual in the highest political office sees great value in tapping into the support of active groups, like Super PACs.  President Obama seems to be considering the financial support of these outside groups to help get him reelected.  These groups help tout the benefits of Obama and risks associated with bringing someone new in the oval office.  It’s money that gets spent on his campaign that doesn’t come out of his campaign budget.  Achieving success through the efforts of others is such a novel idea.

When you look at how social networks and even politics benefit so greatly from collaboration, why would anyone want to try to achieve success by themselves?  The individual approach to success isn’t likely to achieve big results in a short amount of time.  If we look at what we normally do to get success as an individual, we will realize that we are using up our most valuable resource (time) fairly quick.  Research shows that those who achieve promotions early in their career are more likely to achieve more success later in their career.  So, if we spend four years earning a college, work for four more years and then exert two more years getting a master’s degree, we’ve used up ten years of our working lives.  If you haven’t made great leaps and bounds up the ladder before this, you’ll have to make them in the next five or ten years if you hope to avoid being viewed as a slow performer.  Yeah, it’s not fair but it’s reality.  There's only a limited number of positions at the top and we have to discriminate to fill them.

So how can you tap into faster success?  You can use the power of collaboration and networking.  You can build your own team of supporters who can help you define your career path, build the skills you need,  find the opportunities, network into corporate grapevines to gain access and recognition, and fight off the competition.  The method for building such a career strategy is called the Blitz Approach.  I’ve studied this for years and have even created a map on how to plan out this strategy.   You can find this map and supporting material in our book at www.blitztheladder.com.

How much longer will you fight to achieve your goals all by yourself?  Tap into the power of collaborative groups to save yourself time and effort in making your dreams a reality.  As Brian Tracy said “it will save you years in moving onward and upward.”