Bill Gates Explains Network Intelligence

A decade ago, Bill Gates wrote: “The most meaningful way to differentiate your company from your competition, the best way to put distance between you and the crowd, is to do an outstanding job with information. How you gather, manage, and use information will determine whether you win or lose.” This could not be truer today. But the way we’ve been socialized to think about information and knowledge is radically insuf[icient. Our educational system trains us to memorize facts stored in textbooks and then regurgitate them on an exam.

But as the modern professional, you can’t acquire knowledge this way, because the knowledge you need isn’t static—it’s always changing. You can’t cram your brain with all the relevant information that might possibly be relevant to your careers, then deploy it on exam day. In the world of work, every day is exam day—every day brings new, unpredictable challenges and decisions. Stockpiling facts won’t get you anywhere. What will get you somewhere is being able to access the information you need, when you need it.

You get the intelligence you need to make good career decisions by talking to people in your network. It’s people who help you understand your assets, aspirations, and the market realities; it’s people who help you vet and get introduced to possible allies and trust connections; it’s people who help you track the risk attached to a given opportunity. What you get when you tap into other people’s brains is called “network intelligence.”

To pull intelligence from your network, you need to map your network so you know who knows what, and then you need to ask questions or send out the queries that elicit the useful answers.