It makes a hell of fun to belong to the German "Mafia"

Hi everybody. I am terribly sorry for beeing quite late with my today`s post here in my blog, but this was just because of my participation in various consecutive international fone and online conferences during all the morning. And this leads me directly to the subject which I have chosen for sharing with You today.

Since my arrival in Mexico for my first job there as Managing Director of ElringKlinger at it`s plant in Toluca in June 2003, I have made huge experience and I have become a very active networker with all German associations and organisations which exist in the different countries, like the AHK`s, IHK`s, VDMA, VDI, GIZ, Lateinamerika Verein, Afrikaverein and several others. 

I always found it extremely helpful and beautiful, to get to know with people from other German and any other international companies, which are also doing business and making experience with all kinds of situations and challenges, which You typically can find as a stranger in the different countries, where I have been moving and doing buisiness for the different companies, for which I have been working so far as General Manager. 

In general it is very nice and important, to built a wide network of personal and professional contacts to reliable and experienced professionals from all kinds of businesses, industries and  companies. And as a foreigner in a far away country nothing is easier than this. It just depends on You. 

My strategy for getting my network extended and to make active use of it, have always been the same. Wherever and whenever this makes sence, I join the German - and also other international or local national - associations with the company for which I am working. I start to make new contacts, to present myself to all people, which I find nice and/or interesting and I start to participate actively in all events which I find interesting for me and/or my company. 

But this is not a 1-man show. I always very quickly invite and introduce my management team colleagues and friends from other companies, so that they can independently of me - but for sure sometimes also together with me - participate in events and activities there and create and extend their own contact and friendship networks.

And we also very often invite the associations to participate - and support us - during own or joint inhouse activities and/or public events, at different locations including our company and the offices of the associations.

I will give You some insights into more detailed experiences which we have made with this kind of activities during future posts. 

But I have also learned some basic "rules" for becoming successful with this kind of activities:

First of all You need to participate actively and openly in such events and activities of professional associations. Only to become a member, to participate rarely in their events and activities and to always sit or stand together and talk with the same few people which You already know there does not lead You to any gains. 

And You must be open for "give & take" and not just try, to take information and support from the others. Really nicely working networks can only grow if all people involved contribute to all others expectations, needs and requests. There is definitely no space for pure egoists in such modern, open, colaborative networks.

I think this was a good enough opening of this very interesting and important subject and I will come back to several more detailed examples and success cases in my future posts.

Before jumping out, I will just recommend You this Canned Heat song from my hippie times a couple of decades ago, which describes quice nicely what I have tried to describe above:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnPkEyP_Tzg

Have a great day and lots of success with whatever You will still be doing today.