Hope Is Not A Strategy - MAC165

When people called Terry Rice lucky, he had an answer: luck is when preparation and opportunity are met with action. In Luck When Preparation and Opportunity Meet Action (MAC-162) we covered the action. Five words, Hey, I like your podcast, said at a free kids' gymnastics class in Brooklyn, turned a chance meeting with Jason Feifer, the editor in chief of Entrepreneur, into a working relationship and eventually real money. This is that method.

Two Rooms, One Method

Terry is a consultant. Everyone he wants to reach lives outside his company, mostly on social media, so the method he described on the Help Wanted episode where he told this story is built for the outside world. Most of us work in two rooms: the company we work for now, and everything outside it. The four moves work in both, but they build two different things, and if you don't know which one you're building, you'll aim them at the wrong people.

Inside your company, you're building a network. Outside it, you're building a reputation. A network is the people who know you: your manager's boss, the leads of the teams next to yours, the person who runs the talent review. They decide your next role here, and what you need from them is access and trust. A reputation is the people who know what you're known for: peers at other companies, people who write and speak in your field, recruiters. Most will never meet you. What you need is an accurate sense of what you're good at, so your name comes up when a door opens elsewhere. Inside, you want to be known. Outside, you want to be known for something.

The research lines up with the split. Herminia Ibarra and Mark Hunter studied thirty managers stepping into leadership and described three kinds of networks: operational, personal and strategic. Almost everyone neglected the strategic one. Your internal network covers the operational and strategic kinds; your external reputation lives mostly in the personal one.

Move One: The List of Forty

Terry keeps a list of about forty people he wants to be known by, and they have to be active: people who post, reply and show up. A famous name who hasn't answered a comment in three years doesn't belong on it.

Why forty? Three is a bet that one of them has a need at the exact moment you're paying attention. Four hundred is too many to pay real attention to. Forty is the size where you can keep up with what each person is working on, and that's the point, because you can't offer specific help to someone whose work you don't know. It's the idea from Building a Network (MAC-029) with a number attached: depth beats count. There's also a research reason not to fill the list with close friends. Randomized experiments on LinkedIn across roughly twenty million people found that moderately weak ties, people you know but not well, produced the most job moves.

Inside the company, much of the list comes from the org chart: your manager's boss, the leaders of teams your work depends on, someone who sees across the business, a person who has run the project you want next. The trap is an internal list made entirely of peers. Peers don't decide your next role, and, the person you report to often can't move your career alone. Put some names a level or two above you.

Outside the company, the list skews toward people who publish, speak, organize or host something in your field: the person who runs a regional user group, a writer whose newsletter your industry reads, a hiring manager who posts about their team. Active beats famous here too. Split the list roughly half and half, leaning internal if you want to grow where you are and external if you're planning a move soon. Write it down. A list you keep in your head is a wish.

Move Two: Comments Before Connections

Terry's rule: connections are made in the comment section, not by sending a connection request. A request asks a busy person to accept a stranger on faith. A comment asks for nothing, shows up where they already are, and lets them decide whether you're worth knowing. Terry spent about a year commenting on Jason's posts before that gymnastics class. A comment worth answering carries one of three things: a specific detail from your own experience, a real question they could answer, or a useful addition they didn't include. "Great post" carries none of them. After the comment comes a direct message once they know your name, then a call or coffee.

Inside the company, picture your skip-level posting an update about a cost problem their organization is chasing. You've seen the same problem in your own team's numbers, so you reply in the thread with one line on what you saw and one question about whether it matches what they're seeing. You didn't ask for a meeting. You added something to their problem, where their peers could see it. Internally, the comment section is the meeting thread, the shared channel and the question you ask out loud in a review. That's the advice from Visibility (MAC-081), that a well-timed question is one of the cheapest ways to be seen, now aimed at someone on your list.

Outside the company, the comment section is literal, and the stakes are higher. A thoughtful reply is visible to their whole audience, so it starts a relationship and builds your reputation at once. Write it as if it might be quoted: specific, generous, and with no links to your own work. If the posting episodes left you stuck, a comment is your on-ramp: the smallest possible post. The rule from "What If My Boss Sees This?" (MAC-164) applies: talk about the pattern, and keep the situation inside the building.

Move Three: Name the Help

Terry never asks "how can I help?" He shows up with the help already named. "Let me know if there's anything I can do" sounds generous, but it hands the work of figuring out what you could do back to the busiest person in the conversation, so the offer sits there, unanswered.

After the coffee with Jason, Terry recorded a short, unrequested video walking through three or four specific ways to improve a page Entrepreneur was using to sell a new product. It was small, usable immediately, and easy to forward to the people who owned that page. Days later, Jason was in a meeting where nobody had the marketing background they needed, and he said, I know a guy. A specific offer shows your thinking instead of describing it.

This is also the move most likely to backfire. An unsolicited offer is only as good as your read on what the other person actually needs. If it fixes a problem they don't think they have, it's noise. If it says "here's what you got wrong," it reads as "I'm smarter than you." If it's really about showing off, it's a pitch. Terry's video could easily have gone that way. My read is that it worked because a year of following Jason's work told him what Jason cared about and how he'd take outside input. So this is not an invitation to sell yourself. It's a legitimate offer to help with a problem they're facing right now. If you can't name that problem from something they've said or done, go back to commenting. Help solves their problem. A pitch solves yours.

Inside the company, this is the most powerful of the four moves, and the safest. Your manager's boss mentions in a staff meeting that they're preparing a quarterly review and the numbers are a mess. You say, "I pulled something similar for our team last quarter. I could put together a one-page summary of the trend by Thursday if that would help." They said the problem out loud first, so you're not guessing. If that sounds like Busy Is Not Visible (MAC-161), it should: the forwardable update is a specific offer you make to your manager every month.

Outside the company, the offer looks like Terry's video: a short teardown of something they've published, a written answer to a question they asked publicly, or an introduction to someone they'd want to meet. As Building Someone Else's Network (MAC-079) showed, an introduction is one of the most valuable offers there is, and it costs you one email.

There's a line here: generosity is a strategy, unlimited generosity is free labor. Keep the offer small, finishable in about an hour, and inside the company, work you're allowed to do. Give once, then let them decide what comes next.

Move Four: Send It Before It's Perfect

The last move is the one Terry was most honest about. He wrote his early messages to Jason in Microsoft Word, then pasted them into Instagram, where the spacing fell apart. At the coffee, he talked, in his words, fifty miles a minute. He was sure he'd blown it both times. Jason doesn't remember either one. People don't grade you like a teacher; they form an overall impression of whether you're trustworthy and useful. Terry's version: perfection is the enemy of progress, and time kills deals.

Imperfect action carries a different risk in each room. Inside the company, being clumsy is cheap, because the relationship continues after a stumble. The real risk is political: a message sent around your manager can cost far more than an awkward sentence. Send imperfectly, but through the normal channel, and tell your manager what you're doing before they hear it from someone else. If the person is your skip-level, you don't need a side channel at all. That's what the one-on-one in The Strategic Audition (MAC-163) is for.

Outside the company, a stumble is more visible and lasts longer, because a public post doesn't fade like a hallway conversation. That's not a reason to wait. It's a reason to keep your first public move short and specific: all visibility, no exposure.

Sometimes you do all of this and nothing happens for a month. Terry's advice is to be strategically patient and expect the value to eventually flow both ways. Inside a company, the network moves on the company's calendar: the next kickoff, the next reorg. Outside, a reputation builds across months of showing up. Networking Is a Long Game (MAC-121) was a warning about the timeline. So don't measure the likes. Measure the list. Are you still showing up for the same forty people?

Your Action Plan

There are four steps. First, build your list: about forty active people, inside and outside your company, with one thing each is working on right now. Second, write five comments this week, with no connection requests yet. Third, name one specific offer for one person who has said or shown they're dealing with a problem now. Fourth, send it within forty-eight hours, unpolished, and tell your manager first if the person sits above them. The first three steps come with prompts below, because tracking forty people is the kind of sorting an assistant is good at. The last step gets none, because nobody can press send for you.

What looked like luck from the outside was a list with Jason's name on it, a year of comments with substance, an offer with the help already named, and a slightly awkward message sent before it was ready. Every piece of it was a decision. Inside, you're building the network that decides your next move here. Outside, you're building the reputation that makes your next move possible anywhere. Same four moves, different people. Hope is not a strategy. A list of forty is.

Get the Episode + Prompts

The full episode and show notes are at managingacareer.com/165, including the related networking and posting episodes. The three action-plan prompts are below. Copy them, and change them to fit how you actually work.

Prompt — the list.

I'm going to paste names from my calendar, recent email threads, company channels I'm in, and people I follow professionally. Help me build a list of about forty people I want to be known by. Split them into two groups: inside my company and outside it. For each person, tell me what they appear to be working on right now, based only on what I've pasted, and quote the line you got it from. Flag anyone who looks inactive. Inside the company, tell me if the list is mostly peers and suggest which roles above my level are missing, without inventing names. Do not guess at anyone's priorities, and if my material is too thin to tell, say so and ask me one question instead of filling the gap.

Prompt — the comment check.

Here are drafts of comments I plan to leave, each with the post or message it responds to. For each draft, tell me whether it contains at least one of these: a specific detail from my own experience, a real question the person could answer, or a useful addition they didn't include. If it contains none, say so plainly and tell me what's missing. Do not rewrite my comments to sound more polished, do not add flattery, and do not add links to my own work. Flag anything that could read as self-promotion. If you can't tell what the original post was about, ask me instead of assuming.

Prompt — the offer.

Here is one person I want to be known by, what I know about what they're working on, the things they've said or posted recently, and a list of my skills. First, tell me which problem they appear to be facing right now, and quote the exact line that shows it; if nothing I've pasted shows a current problem, say so and stop rather than inventing one. Then draft three specific offers that help with that problem. Each must be something I could finish in about an hour, that they could use right away, and that names the help instead of asking what they need. Flag any offer that critiques their work, implies they got something wrong, or mainly shows off my skills rather than solving their problem. Keep each offer under 60 words. Never use the phrase "let me know how I can help." Do not invent facts about the person or their work; use only what I've given you, and if you need more, ask me. If the person works at my company, flag any offer that might go around my manager or that uses information I may not be allowed to share.

Links & References

• Research & sources — Herminia Ibarra and Mark Hunter: How Leaders Create and Use Networks
• Research & sources — A Causal Test of the Strength of Weak Ties (Rajkumar et al., Science 2022)
• Episode inspiration — Help Wanted: The Foolproof Way to Slide Into Someone's DMs, with Terry Rice (Apple Podcasts)
• Episode inspiration — Free Time with Jenny Blake, episode 245, with Terry Rice
• Related Managing A Career episodes — Building a Network (MAC-029)
• Related Managing A Career episodes — Personal Brand (MAC-043)
• Related Managing A Career episodes — Skip Level 1x1 (MAC-064)
• Related Managing A Career episodes — Sphere of Influence (MAC-070)
• Related Managing A Career episodes — Building Someone Else's Network (MAC-079)
• Related Managing A Career episodes — Visibility (MAC-081)
• Related Managing A Career episodes — Networking Is a Long Game (MAC-121)
• Related Managing A Career episodes — Your Manager Is Not Your Career Sponsor (MAC-139)
• Related Managing A Career episodes — You Need to Be Posting Publicly (MAC-144)
• Related Managing A Career episodes — Manufacturing Serendipity (MAC-147)
• Related Managing A Career episodes — What to Post When You Think You Have Nothing to Say (MAC-153)
• Related Managing A Career episodes — Your Digital Footprint Is Your New Resume (MAC-154)
• Related Managing A Career episodes — Busy Is Not Visible (MAC-161)
• Related Managing A Career episodes — Luck When Preparation and Opportunity Meet Action (MAC-162)
• Related Managing A Career episodes — The Strategic Audition (MAC-163)
• Related Managing A Career episodes — "What If My Boss Sees This?" (MAC-164)

TAKE THE SURVEY!

Are you looking for a career coach? If you reach out to me via the contact form, I will arrange an introductory session where we can talk about your career goals and how I can help. If we're a good fit, we can schedule regular coaching sessions.