Dr. Rick Franza, Dean of the Hull College of Business, discusses a different, timely business topic each Monday in this column. This week, he talks about the relationship between business success and whom you hang out with. The interview has been edited for clarity and impact.
ABD: A common business saying is that to be successful, you have to be around other successful people. How does this help someone be successful in business?
Rick: A lot of it has to do with learning. You can learn how other people do things, how they handle stress, or time management. People with success have clearly found some areas that they’re good at.
You can see how you can adapt those things to your business and your personal habits.
It helps to hang out with people who are well read. A few weeks ago, we talked about being better consumers of information from books and news – being with other people is also consuming information, but it’s better because you can interact with them.
ABD: Let’s back up a minute. We’re talking about successful people, but how do we define success?
Rick: Some of that is up to you. Some things we can all agree on – running a profitable business, having a good market, and business growth. But we each have our own scorecards of what success means, so it’s not just the bottom line. A lot of people that I see as successful are those who give back to make our communities better. Running an ethical business is successful, too. So, we all have different definitions of success.
ABD: So who are the successful people we should interact with?
Rick: Often, it’s hanging out with successful people in other industries or who are not in your career field. It pays to hang out with a diverse group of people. Don’t do diversity for diversity’s sake, but don’t just hang out with people who think like you do or do the things you do – if you do, you’ll just live in an echo chamber.
Hanging out with ethical people rubs off on you. Even having someone to commiserate with you is helpful. I go to a number of conferences with other deans of business schools and it’s nice to have somebody who can relate to the issue you face.
ABD: What about people who are less successful than you, at least right now, but have the right skills to become successful?
Rick: You can benefit from being with people who are earlier in their careers that you can mentor. You never really know something until you can teach it. While it’s very beneficial to hang out with successful people, it’s also important to be involved in other people’s successes. Helping to lift someone up to see their potential is important. It’s important to your success to help others be more successful.
ABD: How do we go about finding these other successful people to hang out with?
Rick: There are a number of ways to do that. There are formal organizations that bring successful people together, especially for small and medium businesses, like Vistage and The Alternative Board. There are networking organizations that also do good works, like Rotary and Kiwanis. Even volunteering for a non-profit can put you with successful people since many successful businesses incorporate volunteering into their business.
Depending on your industry, you can get involved in professional organizations – locally, we have chapters for project managers, human resource managers, marketing, CPAs, and others. It doesn’t hurt to know what other people are doing.
Attending regional and national conferences is a good way to get different perspectives. Seeing how people in your kind of job do it in different settings is very helpful. People there are much more likely to talk to you because you’re not a direct competitor. But you can fall into the trap of always just talking to the same people, so try to talk to different people.
