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Young CNO – Chief Networking Officer

We began the saga of the CNO - Chief Networking Officer publishing an article in
national magazine in 2007 when we set all the responsibilities and the process of
implementing business network management in organizations. Then, we analyzed the
CNO as a career opportunity for executive women and senior executives. We will
continue to discuss the CNO with focus on executives in early career stage. This is a
subject that matters to any professional who wants to develop new skills, amplify the
network, including those who operate in Human Resources arena.

Everyone knows the tale of John and Mary. Let´s consider a more modern version of it.
John is the best student in class, but is somewhat introspective. His top grades come
from maths and physics. He is apparently shy, but very observant and with a
strategic/analytical thinking that would envy anyone. Ele é aprovado numa das
melhores faculdades do país na área de Exatas. He was accepted by one of the best
colleges in the country in Engineering. Conversely, Mary is the most popular girl in
class. She knows everyone and everyone knows her. She has an incredible memory and
a sincere interest in people, in general. She decides to go to college in the area of
Humanities, more specifically, Communication.

Years later, the two meet again in a corporate event. John is an analyst of a large bank.
Maria has been working for two years in the commercial area of a large
telecommunications group. Both are doing very well in their careers, and have recently
done a training of the new leadership model, CNO - Chief Networking Officer. They
discuss about the possibilities and challenges of implementing this methodology in their
respective businesses and careers.

Author: Octavio Pitaluga Neto 1/2 All intelectual property rights reserved
Both are already well acquainted with major social networks. Since college days and
internship program periods, they have been in contact with all their colleagues, family
members and professionals of many different lines of business and profiles, they have
met during this journey. No contact was neglected, because both John and Mary
understood, since early days, the profound value of these relationships may have to their
careers.

Social networks have helped a lot to keep in the mind these people for all occasions like
anniversary celebrations, Christmas and even in difficult moments of life of each one.
Not to mention, lunches and happy-hours regularly organized throughout the year. At
times, Mary organized a big party somewhere just to maintain live contact with
classmates in order to know how everybody was going.

Maria has a personal database of about 10 thousand contacts scattered in many different
social networks. In turn, John has only 2 thousand, claiming he did not have much time
to keep them updated. Maria emphasized to John the importance of learning how to use
social networks efficiently with focus on career, entrepreneurship and corporate
business.

She said that thanks to a virtual relationship in social networks with an European
executive, she helped built a very important partnership for her company, which was
already giving good financial results to both organizations. This constructive attitude
has been recognized by her superiors in the form of a bonus and inte rnational travel to
the country, where the partner was located, as an integral member of the Brazilian team.

Then, John began to quickly calculate that if he developed only 10 new contacts through
social networks of each working day, this would provide an average of 200 new
contacts per month, 2,400 new contacts per year and 24,000 additional contacts within
10 years. During this period, he expects to be already positioned as Middle Manager in
his organization or in similar one. Certainly, his relationship capital would be much
appreciated by various organizations, helping to further accelerate his career even in an
eventual economic crisis.

Both concluded that the first step to be taken as CNO - Chief Networking Officer is the
immediate experience with social networking while mapping of all their contacts,
through them and always having a personal database as back-up for any
eventuality. John and Mary decided to highlight this heritage in their respective résumés
from now on.

They quickly understood that the efficient use of resources such as time and the tools
offered by the Internet can make a tremendous difference in their lives, both socially
and professionally.

Octavio Pitaluga Neto


CNO - Chief Networking Officer
TEN - Top Executives Net

This article was originally written in Portuguese in November, 2009

Author: Octavio Pitaluga Neto 2/2 All intelectual property rights reserved

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