After a wave of early customer feedback, LinkedIn shifted its primary product development focus from individual to corporate subscriptions. 

One problem: I had never built a corporate product. 

I didn’t know who could best advise us when I called David Sze at Greylock. He introduced us to Workday CEO Aneel Bhusri, who connected us to Mike Stankey on his team. Mike had the exact skills and knowledge to help us. 

My network helped me pinpoint what I needed, and guided me to an expert better than I could have managed alone. 

There will be many times when you won’t have the answer or the expertise, but your network might. Network intelligence is not only the collective know-how of your network, but also how you access and integrate its wisdom into your decision-making process.  

On the fifth episode of the Startup of You Podcast, Ben Casnocha and I cover:   

• Why you should see—and map—your network as a sensor network
• What network literacy is, why it’s important, and how to develop it
• How to conduct better reference checks—and with whom

Listen here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dont-make-decisions-alone/id1611250417?i=1000571430867 

If you like what you hear, please subscribe and let us know your thoughts and questions in the comments below.