Broaden your affiliations: when you build a network of diverse relationships, you never know where the path will lead.

• Author: Stevenson, Jane
• Position: ENDNOTE - Reprint

THE PACE in today's world is nonstop, full of imperatives and limited energy. Just keeping your teams energized and getting to the people you have to talk to can be a challenge, so moving beyond that is difficult to imagine. The most effective leaders do, however. They build a network of relationships outside their business, and even outside their industry, because they're curious about what's out there. They want to anticipate what's around the bend and beyond. They wonder what opportunities are available and what might get in the way. They also think about which companies they might partner with and which ones represent the biggest threats.

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These considerations should be part of every leader's thought process, especially if you're a CEO. Thinking about them helps you move outside your own world and holistically expand your thinking to see your business from the perspectives of people on other continents, in other industries, on opposite teams, and in intersecting areas like government or academia. Not only does this provide you with the information you need to make sure you're not operating with blinders on, but it can inspire you to define an unimagined future for your company, division, or product line. When you let diverse relationships in, you never know where the path will lead.

The big connection

One of our favorite illustrations of this tenet involves Henry Ford and Thomas Edison.

As a young man on his father's farm in Dearborn, Mich., Ford had followed Thomas Edison's career with much admiration. So when, at the age of 15, he left farm life and moved to Detroit, it seemed only natural that he should take a job at the Edison Illuminating Co. Starting out as a machinist, he soon worked his way up to chief engineer.

As the story goes, one year Ford's boss, Alex Dow, asked Ford to go with him to a company-sponsored convention in Manhattan Beach, N.Y. The guest of honor at the evening's opening banquet was none other than Edison himself. Knowing Ford's fascination with the inventor, Dow pointed Ford out to Edison, telling him, "There's a young fellow who has made a gas car." Over the course of the evening, Edison asked young Ford a host of questions, and when the interview was over, the older inventor emphasized his admiration by banging his fist down on the table. "Young man," he said, "that's the thing! You have it! Your car is self-contained and carries its own power plant!"

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Years later...