Does it feel like everything’s in flux? Are you always working faster just to keep up and reaching out to your network more frequently to get a sense of what’s happening? Well, you’re not alone. With constant change and traditional structures of stability eroding, the way we manage relationships — both professionally and personally — is evolving. We’re turning more and more to those we trust in networks built to respond to continuous change and act as a buffer against uncertainty.
In the wake of this evolution in networking, organizations are taking note. They see an opportunity to invest in these dynamic alliances as a more strategic alternative to the scattershot marketing methods of the past. But this convergence of business interests with personal networks raises questions about authenticity and ethics: it’s hard not to feel like there’s an ask down the line when corporations come to the party.
Over the past few months, I’ve been deep in questions of ethics and marketing, workshopping my ideas with organisational leaders and individuals engaging in the emerging phenomenon I’ve come to call Allianced Cultivation. Now, I’m sharing these insights, along with practical tools and conclusions, to help you apply them in your organisation or personal network.s
This exploration takes you on a journey, culminating in practical actions and measures you can implement. Along the way, we’ll delve into how Allianced Cultivation differs from traditional networking models, explore the marketing angle by examining how modern engagement practices are evolving, and unpack its value as a resilient framework for navigating today’s uncertainty. We’ll also dive into ROI calculations and metrics designed for these value-based networks, before concluding with guidance for individuals navigating networking activities while staying within governance practices.
What is Allianced Cultivation?
Allianced Cultivation is the deliberate nurturing of cooperative networks, where individuals and groups team up to navigate challenges and pursue shared opportunities. These alliances are rooted in trust, shared experiences, and a collective vision for the future, but they require ongoing cultivation — care and commitment over time to grow into resilient, adaptable relationships. Unlike conventional networking – which often prioritises quick wins or transactional exchanges — Allianced Cultivation focuses on building enduring partnerships that can support mutual growth and stability, even in the face of uncertainty.
So, how can we use Allianced Cultivation to navigate the uncertainties of modern networking? Let’s find out.
Understanding the Building Blocks of Meaningful Networks
Working on a Customer Experience (CX) transformation programme this year, I spent a good amount of time looking at professional networks and thinking about how to describe them. Any exploration into this area will find that the most valuable interactions often hinge on fostering cooperation and meaningful exchange. Yet not all forms of exchange are created equal. In marketing, the challenge is navigating that exchange is happening but trying to come about it in a way that avoids the “ick factor” — or worse, crossing ethical or legal boundaries.
The language in this area converges around three core concepts: reciprocity, mutual benefit, and shared endeavours. Other concepts, like graft and opportunism are obvious red flags. But the word that marketers dread the most is transactional. Yet, transactional isn’t inherently bad. It exists on a spectrum — good transactional exchanges build trust and deliver mutual value, while bad ones feel exploitative or hollow.
Let’s take a look at this language of exchange to understand where the lines are drawn to see if we can extract ‘good exchange’.
Traditional Models of Exchange
At its core, one of the simplest forms of exchange is reciprocity — what we might call “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” It’s a balanced exchange, often about being helpful in the moment. Sometimes it’s for a specific thing in the short term, but the balancing act can also play out over time. Think of bringing your co-worker a cup of coffee in the morning with the unspoken expectation that they’ll return the favour later. It’s a simple, everyday exchange that works — until the stakes get higher. In more complex situations, the feeling of obligation or expectation can introduce challenges, particularly when viewed through the lens of business ethics.
Next, we have mutual benefit, which feels like a step up: a win-win scenario. Everyone gets something out of the exchange, even if it’s not direct or immediate. This is where we start to recognise the value of diversity: different people or organisations bring unique contributions to the table, and everyone benefits. Strategic partnerships in the business world are a classic example of mutual benefit. However, trouble arises when the primary beneficiaries are individuals rather than their organisations, creating ethical and accountability challenges.
Finally, there’s shared endeavours, which shift the focus entirely. It’s not about tit-for-tat or even mutual gain — it’s about the process of working together toward a common goal. The rewards often aren’t immediately visible or equally tangible, but the shared experience and larger purpose drive the effort. Consider open-source software projects or community initiatives. In the business world, this is the hallmark of premium service engagements, where two companies go above and beyond to bring their best to the table.
But, when organisations contribute significant value to joint partnerships or open-source projects, complex issues often arise. The conversation inevitably turns to questions of intellectual property, equitable profit sharing, potential conflicts of interest, and accountability if things go wrong. Things get even stickier when the participating organisations are unequal in size or stature. Organisational Codes of Conduct often address these conflicts head-on, focusing on legality, transparency, and fair dealing. However, these policies are almost always scoped to organisational exchange. They rarely account for individuals acting independently, often framing personal benefit as entirely out of bounds. And it’s these sorts of considerations that often force individuals to act outside of their organisations in networking exchanges.
These seemingly trivial reflections led me to a deeper question:
How can individuals and organisations ethically navigate the increasingly overlapping boundaries between personal exchanges and professional networking?
For individuals, this means balancing authenticity with strategic engagement, especially when stepping outside organisational oversight. For organisations, it raises the challenge of supporting these dynamic interactions without compromising trust or imposing transactional expectations.
Participating in a lot of networking activity and thinking about my friends who work in highly restricted environments, the search for an answer led me to keep thinking about networking long after the project completed.
Leveraging Social Networks for Trust and Collaboration
A hint at the possibility of separating personal exchanges from professional networking finds its roots in 20th-century anthropology. Bronisław Malinowski, a pioneering anthropologist, argued that reciprocity extends beyond mere economic transactions. He observed that in various cultures, reciprocal exchanges serve as complex systems that facilitate social bonds, reinforce alliances, and maintain peace between communities.
Think again about that cup of coffee, or that friend that picks up the bill for dinner. You’re perfectly capable of getting your own coffee or paying for your own food — it’s about creating a reason to meet again. And indeed, in the work I did, everyone could see how exchange fosters social bonds and reinforces alliances, but conveying this nuanced perspective to a broader audience proved challenging. The terms reciprocity or to reciprocate carry that “transactional ick” when trying to get to authenticity and genuine connection in marketing. This realization underscored the need for a new way to communicate the value of social connections without the baggage of transactional language.
This social bonding aspect of exchange passes the smell test for ethics, but what can we do with something so academic sounding? Marketers are looking for ways to leverage the strength of these bonds to foster loyalty without appearing inauthentic. The challenge lies in highlighting the value of social bonding and bringing it to the forefront of exchanges. By looking at the evolution of networking models across the commercial and creative spheres, we can start to see how authenticity operates in practice and explore ways to apply it to our problem.
How Networking Has Evolved Across Commercial and Creative Realms
I’m not by any stretch trying to say that all of this is new. Of course, strategic alliances and networks built on mutual benefit, reciprocity, and shared endeavours have long been central to driving both individual and collective progress. Guilds are an age-old example of networks that epitomise this dynamic: fostering environments where personal skill development and communal progress were deeply intertwined.
More recently, the evolution of personal brand illustrates how our very identity has become a product of this exchange, transforming from a tool for individual reputation management to a mechanism for economic gain. In some views, our identity has become the unit of value and exchange for reciprocity and collaboration that might lead to shared success.
On the other end of the spectrum, Brian Eno’s Scenius celebrates the collective creativity within communities, where the contributions of individuals are both contributors to and beneficiaries of the group’s creativity, embodying principles of shared endeavours and mutual benefit. In this view, the individual takes the back seat in value.
Both personal branding and scenius, though differing fundamentally—one focusing on individual promotion and the other on collective interaction—highlight how personal and professional networks are inherently intertwined, forming a combined social-professional ecosystem. This interplay is central to understanding how we build connections that foster collaborative success.
Alongside these broader concepts, structured tools like defining personal missions or using models such as SMART goals provide practical ways to approach intentional network building.
By examining both these conceptual and structured approaches, we can better understand the different aspects of exchange, exploring whether it can move beyond pure transactionalism and uncovering why such interactions are becoming more prevalent.
The Rise and Risks of Personal Branding
The evolution of personal branding from the mid-20th century, shaped by figures like Dale Carnegie’s seminal work, How to Win Friends and Influence People, laid the foundation for using a positive self-image to influence others effectively, essentially starting the conversation on how individuals could strategically ‘sell’ themselves today. By the time Tom Peters popularized the term personal branding in his 1997 article The Brand Called You, the concept had shifted towards viewing oneself as a business, emphasizing the need for individuals to manage and promote their personal reputations as carefully as any business product.
This ‘self-as-business’ approach to personal identity continued to evolve with the rise of social media, transforming personal branding from a tool for career advancement to one for direct monetization. Influencers have now leveraged this capability to turn their personalities, lifestyles, and expertise into profitable brands. However, we’ve seen this blurring of marketable products and identity become performative. When this happens, the original intent of building effective interpersonal connections through personal branding often gets lost.
For many of us, participating in mixed social/professional settings can become a continuous presentation of a ‘Personal Brand Slide Deck’ where interactions are managed and based on the perceived needs and interests of others. This approach, while effective in keeping one relevant and marketable, can also be exhausting and contribute to a loss of personal authenticity.
The constant pressure to update and promote one’s brand to stay relevant can blur the boundaries between personal and professional life. For anyone whose job isn’t their true passion, this can be exhausting. Parsing the personal brand becomes a constant chore, especially when trying to maintain authenticity.
One approach to managing this challenge is the concept of personal brand provenance, suggested to me by a colleague. This idea focuses on whether someone’s presented story makes sense when viewed through the lens of their past experiences and growth — a way of ensuring the narrative remains authentic and credible.
Despite these challenges, personal branding remains a powerful tool for networking, effectively positioning individuals within their professional networks as entities in a marketplace. This strategic positioning facilitates exchange, where personal brands serve as both the presentation and the currency of interaction. Think about the last networking event where you spent time deciphering a person’s unique value proposition through subtle cues and conversations. It’s much easier to connect if you can quickly ‘browse the brochure’—when individuals clearly present their personal brands, making their strengths and offerings readily apparent.
This trend and its benefits can make commercialisation of the self with its accompanying ill-effects feel necessary, inevitable, and unsatisfying all at the same time.
Unlocking Innovation Through Collective Genius
The loss of authenticity in personal branding contrasts with the rise of the creative-superstar-as-frontman in the last century. Icons like David Bowie, Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, and Le Corbusier had unmistakable personal brands, yet their work was profoundly influenced by the vibrant scenes they were part of. They not only drew inspiration from their surroundings but also contributed back to the collective creativity of their communities. Scenius, a term coined by musician Brian Eno, describes the collective intelligence and creativity that emerge from vibrant communities.
Unlike the solitary genius, scenius emphasizes how collaboration and shared inspiration drive groundbreaking innovation. Take Le Corbusier, for instance. Often regarded as the epitome of modernist brand identity, he was deeply embedded in the avant-garde movements of 20th-century Europe. His ideas flourished within influential circles like the Bauhaus and the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM), where purposeful amplification of modernist principles allowed for an exchange of revolutionary concepts. These collectives of artists and thinkers not only defined modernism but also shaped Le Corbusier’s work as much as he influenced theirs.
This interplay suggests that while we may curate our personal brands as refined ideals for public consumption, our most authentic selves — and the recognition we receive — are profoundly influenced by our environments and the networks we engage with.
However, scenes are often products of specific environments and locations, making them ephemeral by nature. They are tied to particular places and times, their creativity fuelled by the unique conditions of their surroundings. Moreover, scenes frequently define themselves through rejection—rejecting past conventions, distancing themselves from contemporaries, and contrasting their work against established norms. This contrast and defiance become part of their identity, but it can also create barriers.
Today, digital tools have expanded our ability to collaborate across distances, yet they often lack the spontaneity and depth essential for fosteing a scene. Virtual meetings, typically formal and structured, rarely allow for the serendipity that sparks innovation within a creative scene. The physical proximity and unplanned interactions that fuel a scene’s creativity are difficult to replicate digitally.
Capturing the moment of collective change is crucial. One must recognize how the wave of innovation forms and be ready to ride it to achieve greatness. But when the wave recedes, you might find yourself stranded, facing new challenges. Will your collaborators be prepared to adapt to this new terrain?
This scenario underscores the risks of relying solely on traditional scenes for growth and innovation. If our networks are too closely tied to specific contexts or defined by rigid boundaries, we may be ill-equipped when circumstances shift. It suggests the need for a different approach to networking—one that emphasizes resilient connections, adaptability, inclusivity, and long-term growth, moving beyond the limitations of scenius
Aligning Personal Purpose with Adaptive Networks
While cultivating alliances within a scene emphasizes collective creativity, navigating this dynamic requires an alignment of personal identity and purpose. This brings us to the idea of the personal mission — a framework for maintaining an internal compass amid external change. Personal missions focus on defining our “why” and aligning it with our actions, ensuring our individual contributions are meaningful and intentional.
Ensuring our individual contributions are meaningful and intentional requires actionable frameworks. Tools like the SMART framework offer a structured approach, ensuring goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and (most importantly) Time-bound. This introduces clarity and flexibility, allowing individuals to adapt their missions to changing circumstances by breaking down broad ambitions into tangible steps. It’s a good way to balance purpose and adaptability while participating in collective efforts or scenes.
But even with framework constraints, missions have a focus on endpoints. This focus can create blinders to serendipity—the unexpected yet fruitful encounters and insights that often spur the most profound innovations. Thriving in uncertainty and moving toward organic growth requires a willingness to get lost for a bit, enjoy the ride, connect with our fellow travellers and be willing to go in the direction of others.
To bridge the gap between structured individualism and the adaptive creativity of collective efforts, we need something more dynamic. Missions give us purpose, but they are fundamentally reactive — anchored to a specific context or goal. We can do better by asking: what shapes that purpose?
Navigating Identity Through Purpose and Creativity
What I’ve observed is that professionals are leveraging existing networks — and forging new ones — as strategic responses to an evolving professional landscape. Faced with constant change, people are asking urgent questions:
“How will AI impact my career?”
Agile development is now a fact in software teams, but leaders often struggle to reconcile its principles with needs of enterprise management where they now operate. The answers they seek often lie beyond technology and even their organisations.
Things are changing too fast and traditional frameworks aren’t keeping up. Personal branding? It can become exhausting — a constant performance that’s hard to keep up when the rules keep shifting. Scenius? It relies on being in the right place at the right time — a luxury not everyone can access or sustain, and harder yet for those further along in their careers and with families.
In response, professionals are forming alliances that might not offer immediate benefits but are driven by a shared sense that they’re moving in the right direction. Busy executives need networks that provide them with the assurance that even if they need to step away temporarily, they won’t miss out on critical developments. Like tending a garden, leaders cultivate these connections with patience, trusting that they will eventually bear fruit and provide support when times get tough. This approach fosters a resilience that traditional frameworks and isolated efforts fail to provide.
You might realise you’ve been part of this kind of network activity without even knowing it. Every time you’ve reached out to a new connection for advice, collaborated across departments, or joined industry discussions to make sense of change, not sure why, but with the feeling that it might pay off just to have the discussion, you’ve participated in Allianced Cultivation.
And if you’re feeling like your personal network and business ones are starting to overlap more and more, and that bigger organizations are playing a bigger role in them, there’s a reason. Let’s look at what’s happening in the marketing world to get a clue about why this is happening.
The Evolving Approach to Business Relationships
This journey to the discovery of Allianced Cultivation started earlier this year when I participated in a programme to operationalize informal customer relationship practices. Our goal was to shift from “random acts” like putting people together in a room, maybe under some industry topic, to intentional, meaningful customer connections. The idea many are chasing today is to apply Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) principles more common in retail marketing efforts into the enterprise B2B context.
For those unfamiliar, CLV emphasizes that retaining customers is more profitable than constantly acquiring new ones, and so you should do the math for your own customers and business. Think of those companies that let employees give you that free cup of coffee or retailers that don’t hassle you when you return something, whatever the state. Rather than nickel-and-dime you, they’re cultivating loyalty through these and other activities like rewards programs and personalized engagement. Often, we’re willing to pay more because of these perks. They recognize that these investments are minor compared to the long-term value of your loyalty as a customer.
Why Relationship-Centric Models Are the Future of Business
In the B2B world, transactions aren’t counted in coffee cups and promotional items. Sales cycles span months, and the impact of a single deal can be significant – making or breaking small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Today’s competitive landscape combined with better analytics capability are putting pressure on marketing teams to answer questions about ROI. Recognizing these challenges, companies are shifting away from the broad-spectrum activities of the past toward Account-Based Marketing (ABM) and Relationship- Based Marketing (RBM) strategies. These strategies focus on high-value accounts and cultivating lasting relationships to maximize both revenue and customer loyalty.
The way that you and I in the tech world experience them is in co-branded marketing efforts. These include joint webinars, industry reports, and case studies developed by multiple companies or between companies and their customers. Many of us participate in efforts that take place over the course of the year, culminating in cross-organisational collaborations during the annual conference season. We might think we’re just sharing our ideas and making connections, but behind them sits a marketing machine whose aim it is to foster the trust and exchange that reduces friction in the early stages of B2B sales efforts.
While navigating this landscape, I was pointed to a research report by Forrester on B2B Advocacy. They suggest that the key to success in these efforts is to identify individuals who are intrinsically motivated to act in the company’s interest because the ongoing relationship fulfils certain personal needs. They classified this behaviour into four ‘personality’ types:
- educators – enjoy sharing and exchanging knowledge
- validators – seek to affirm their choices and provide candid feedback to others
- status seekers – thrive on visibility and recognition
- collaborators – desire partnership and influence
And indeed, with some adjustments, these matched closely to the research evidence from our programme. The personality types proved a useful tool for addressing a key concern of any large enough organisation and its marketing efforts: catering to a diverse audience. Whether they match your experience or not, they’re useful to help the team think about faceting their efforts, so I would go take a listen at some point.
But even as we trained our approach, what we kept coming back to was that the further away you get from pure transactions — the more authentic an activity — the harder it is to work back to ROI. We repeatedly grappled with how to characterize this exchange of value in a way that felt ethical and distinct from the transactional nature of many customer experience programs. Think of those heavy-handed cold call offers you get from vendors to participate in some “fun” networking activity. They’re transparently transactional and give us the ‘ick’. Despite our efforts, we found it challenging to unstick well- intentioned activity from this mess.
Since then, I’ve realised that perspective matters. Organisations rely on metrics and structured approaches to build sustainable networks, but the real power of networking lies in the individual’s ability to forge authentic connections. Shifting focus to personal strategies helps us explore how individuals navigate this evolving landscape.
Reframing Networking Through the Personal Lens
So, let’s flip our model: instead of organizations being at the heart of these network relationships, let’s put the individual front and centre. We’re still talking business, of course, but this time it’s more personal.
When we unpack these marketing/network exchanges from the individual’s perspective, the motivations and questions change. We start to think about the benefits and outcomes to the individual, which might include:
- stronger personal brand – industry recognition boosts mobility and job security
- resilient skill set – diverse skills improve adaptability amid change
- enhanced influence – external credibility builds career resilience and trust
- early insights – access to trends keeps advocates ahead in shifting landscapes
Individuals aren’t just thinking about professional perks, reciprocity, or outputs; as I’ve said, they want to know where things are headed and what sorts of things they can do to get ahead of it. They’re assessing how relationships align with their personal goals and help to fill in the uncertainties. This assessment can be summarised as a set of questions and underlying calculations that test if participating in a particular networking activity might work out. This networking value test asks:
- where have you been? a mix of shared and different experiences is the sugar and spice when cooking up the future—both are essential for adaptability and innovation
- where are you headed? does this person or organization have a trajectory that points toward where we’re going—or away from what concerns us? Alignment makes everything smoother
- what do I have to offer—or what might I need to develop to contribute? knowing what one brings to the table (or might need to learn) provides insight into the cost of entry
- what do I get out of it? less about transactions and more of a vibe-check: a sense of shared values or community that we want to be part of
These questions reflect the deeply personal stakes of navigating uncertainty. Unlike organizations, individuals use networks not just as tools for gain. We can start to see these questions are about something else — the future. We position networks as shields for resilience, adaptation, and long-term growth. Networked activity helps us to map out the maybes in our lives and make them more concrete.
This mental map of maybes mirrors the essence of risk management, a concept deeply tied to the evolution of networking. The Age of Exploration in the early 15th century offers a striking parallel to today, as it too reshaped wealth, power, and social exchange.
Before this era, wealth was static, tied to land and sovereignty. But exploration introduced a dynamic model, expanding wealth through trade, innovation, and collaboration. Alliances and networks allowed innovators to unlock exponential value, baking more pies instead of slicing the old ones thinner. These advancements didn’t come without risks: lost ships, failed ventures, and financial ruin were common. To mitigate this, probability theory emerged, along with joint-stock companies and insurance markets that shared and spread risk.
Today, we face a similar upheaval. Traditional career paths are eroding under the pressures of globalisation, automation, AI, and volatile markets. In response, professionals are forming modern alliances—startups, collaborations, and flexible partnerships — that serve as a form of social insurance, fostering adaptability and shared resilience. Recognizing these networks as responses to external pressures, rather than mere accidents, reveals that they’re not just random connections but tools for navigating uncertainty. While these alliances often emerge under pressure, they’re not always formed with intent. Reflecting on a more intentional approach allows us to engage with them in a more structured and strategic way.
The Allianced Cultivation Framework - Principles for Building Adaptive Networks
So, let’s shift from examining networking behaviour to developing a framework for navigating them intentionally as individuals. First we’ll outline the framework’s guiding principles and demonstrate how they can be applied in familiar contexts and then test the framework using universities as a vivid example of these dynamics in action.
The Allianced Cultivation framework is built on four guiding principles, each derived from core questions about networking from earlier:
-
(where have you been?)
Diversity: Seek connections with a mix of shared and diverse experiences to build trust and broaden perspectives.
Think of someone who’s switched industries—they bring fresh ideas that mix things up and connect the dots in new ways. At the same time, shared experiences create a foundation of trust and understanding. Together, this blend of familiarity and difference helps you stay flexible, think creatively, and adapt when challenges arise. -
(where are you headed?)
Alignment: Understand the arcs of people and organisations—shared paths strengthen while parallel ones can still energise and inspire
Shared vision and complementary trajectories ensure mutual goals and reduce friction in collaboration. -
(what do I have to offer..?)
Contribution: Know your strengths and where you want to grow—contributions matter more when they come from a place of self-awareness and potential
Think of someone who steps outside their comfort zone to develop new skills, like a product designer diving into data analysis to improve their team’s strategy. Meaningful contributions aren’t just about what you can do today—they’re about showing a willingness to grow for tomorrow. Even if you’re not yet an expert, your potential and openness to change can make you invaluable. -
(what do I get out of it?)
Belonging: Seek relationships that foster a sense of belonging and shared purpose—they’re the backbone of lasting, meaningful networks
Think of the colleague who “gets it” – the shared understanding that makes working together productive and energising. Sometimes it’s about people who resonate with your values; other times, it’s those who challenge and expand your perspective while staying aligned. In a world of fleeting connections, finding that vibe creates bonds that truly last.
Testing the framework
To bring these principles to life, consider how they naturally unfold in university settings. Universities provide a dynamic environment where diverse experiences and aligned goals create lasting value:
- Diversity: Universities bring together students from diverse backgrounds while providing shared academic and social contexts. This mix creates opportunities for collaboration, intellectual challenge, and the kind of academic sparring that drives innovative thinking and personal growth.
- Alignment: Study groups, mentorships, and extracurricular activities often create connections based on shared goals and complementary paths. These early alignments persist long after university, forming the foundation for lifelong collaborations that continue to evolve as individual trajectories align or adapt over time.
- Contribution: The university setting encourages growth—students spend their first and second year planning their study path, organisations bring many opportunities for novices knowing that students are open to change and learning. Contribution here is dynamic, driven by mutual support and personal evolution.
- Belonging: Universities thrive on creating communities where people feel they belong. Shared values and group identities form the foundation for lasting relationships.
What’s particularly relevant here is the timing of exchange. In university, the rewards of these alliances — whether they’re career opportunities, shared insights, or lifelong friendships — often emerge years after the relationships are formed. This delay in tangible outcomes captures the essence of Allianced Cultivation: investing in connections without a guarantee of immediate return but trusting in their long-term value.
This delayed exchange is also what makes these alliances fundamentally ethical. They’re free of the pressure of immediate reciprocity, instead built on shared values and genuine connections rather than transactional gains. But the ethics of cultivating these networks can’t be taken for granted, especially when we apply this approach outside the ideal university setting.
So, how do we balance delayed exchange with ethical responsibility in our professional and personal lives? This is where the real opportunity — and challenge — emerges. By understanding how delayed returns align with long-term trust and value creation, we can not only navigate ethical complexities but also unlock a sustainable ROI. We’ve finally arrived at the treasure. Let’s explore how these ideas take shape in broader, less idealised environments.
Solving the ethical exchange dilemma for sales & marketing
We’ve now systematically explored how individuals can approach this new type of networking, but our journey began with a pressing business ethics problem:
How can networks, increasingly shaped by corporate interests, foster trust and drive long-term growth without collapsing into the pressures of transactional, short-term expectations?
To tackle this, we can draw insights from existing models: the UK’s Civil Service Code and the governance practices for non-profits, for instance. The Civil Service Code offers a solid foundation by emphasizing that benefits and outputs should serve the greater good of society. It also underscores the importance of transparency and accountability in ensuring good governance. Similarly, non-profit governance practices focus on ethical operations and aligning activities with overarching missions.
We could spend considerable time applying these principles to address individual concerns and the overlap with corporate objectives. This might involve devising new frameworks to reconcile these aspects, measuring behaviour on some ethical scale, or even suggesting codes of conduct for networks and corporate participation. However, this approach risks becoming an academic exercise or governance by policy – efforts that often get ignored in practice.
I actually went through quite a bit of this exercise. And, indeed, it soon felt like a pointless academic endeavour. I couldn’t imagine rallying my informal network to draft a code of conduct and meticulously measure every corporate interaction. More importantly, from a business perspective, you can’t escape the discussion around ROI. I began to wonder if resolving this ethical dilemma was even possible.
Then, it struck me:
In business, ethics can’t be the starting point. Businesses aren’t in the ethics game – that’s the domain of non-profits.
Rather, you have to accept that competition, survival, and profit inherently involve risk. The key isn’t escaping risk—it’s building the capacity to respond effectively when it arises. In the InfoSec world, we assume vulnerabilities and plan for them as an eventuality, no matter how small. Similarly, businesses must approach transactionalism as an ever-present factor. Instead of drafting codes of conduct that risk being ignored or conflicting with business necessity, organisations should focus on adaptability and readiness to navigate the fine line between ethics and profitability.
As we’ve seen with the advocate conversation, we’re tapping into value-added networks to reduce friction with long sales cycles. And as with TLV, we’re looking for measures to know our investment will pay off. When we put them together, we can see that loss of individuals from our networks leads to substantial losses in our sales pipeline, reputation, and continuity.
Measuring ROI for marketing networks - a practical guide
It turns out that we don’t have to worry about growing our network to answer the ROI question; it’s enough to invest in redundancy. By investing in redundancy—spreading advocacy efforts across a broader base – organizations can future-proof their networks against this type of volatility. The beauty of this approach is that ethical outcomes—like fairness and inclusivity—emerge naturally as by-products.
This simple step of focusing on redundancy gives a few things we can quantify straight away. For instance:
- Advocate Dependency Ratio: The proportion of the pipeline driven by advocates compared to the total pipeline. This metric helps identify over-reliance on a small group of advocates.
- Redundancy Factor: A measure of the organisation’s ability to sustain advocacy efforts despite turnover. Higher redundancy reduces the risk of disruptions caused by advocate attrition.
- Advocate Dependency Risk: Pinpoint specific vulnerabilities, such as single points of failure or over-reliance on high-performing advocates. This insight helps prioritise mitigation strategies.
- Model Potential ROI Loss: An estimate of the financial impact of losing key advocates, highlighting the value of redundancy investments.
Let’s break this down further with practical numbers to illustrate these metrics in action.
First, we define our ratio as the pipeline from advocates/total pipeline:
Assume a pipeline of £10m, where we see that historically, our sales come from advocates representing 7M and 3M is coming in from traditional sales:
Now, let’s say that we’ve got 5 top advocates, that means that each advocate, on average represents 1.4M
One way to approach this is to spend lavishly on these five advocates, but the risk remains a single point of failure. Instead, let’s invest in our network, aiming to create 3 secondary advocates for each top-tier one. This results in a redundancy factor calculated as:
This redundancy factor indicates that, on average, there are 0.6 secondary advocates supporting each top-tier advocate.
For the sake of simplicity, let’s say that those three don’t recover 100% of that 1.4M, maybe only 25% each for a total of 75 total%:
By making our network redundant, we’ve protected 1M in revenue against the loss of a top contributor.
Now we can get back to calculating that ROI. If we spent 500K on this effort to ensure network redundancy:
Convert to:
Substitute the values:
We’ve gotten a staggering 110% ROI potential with these types of efforts
For marketing teams, it can be challenging to attribute income directly to broad-spectrum marketing efforts. However, for established enterprises with access to historical data, these numbers can provide a reasonable baseline for assessing network impact. While the calculations presented here are broad estimates, they highlight a critical insight: investing in redundancy doesn’t just mitigate risk; it generates extraordinary returns. An ROI of 110% is still an impressive starting point, demonstrating the immense potential of structured advocacy programs. As change remains constant and network attrition inevitable, these investments ensure not only financial resilience but also the long-term adaptability and strength of advocate networks.
Beyond ROI: Measuring Network Strength through Sustainability Metrics
While the ROI calculation demonstrates the financial benefits of investing in network redundancy, it also hints at a broader insight: Allianced Cultivation networks can’t always be reduced to monetary terms. One issues raised in discussions with my colleagues in sales & marketing is that they’re often driven by the funnel-type calculations of the past and boxed in by the technology that was developed to support these types of efforts. Tools like Google Analytics, Hubspot, and Salesforce, built to support traditional models, struggle to measure the nuanced dynamics of these networks.
To capture the full value of relationship-driven marketing, we need to expand our metrics beyond financial outcomes. For example, some non-monetary measures can guide organisations toward sustainable network building:
- Adaptability Score: focus on how well the network responds to change
by evolving its composition and practices.
Example Metric: the percentage of new connections formed in a year or the successful completion of collaborative projects with diverse contributors. - Network Regeneration Rate: emphasise the network’s ability to sustain long-term vitality by bringing in fresh perspectives and reactivating dormant relationships Example Metric: the percentage of collaborative projects successfully adapted to include diverse contributors or the proportion of focus areas that shifted in response to emerging trends
- Network Coverage Index: measures the breadth and inclusivity of a
network to ensure contributions are distributed across a wide base, reducing
the risk of over-reliance on a few key individuals
Example Metric: the percentage of potential advocates actively contributing or the ratio of active advocates to total potential advocates. - Advocacy Balance Index: focuses on the distribution of influence among
advocates, ensuring no single individual dominates
Example Metric: a composite measure combining the proportion of pipeline driven by top advocates, the ratio of secondary to primary advocates, and the diversity of active contributors.
These measurements shift the focus from immediate gains to the durability and strength of relationships, supporting ethical participation without sacrificing business objectives. Eventually, technology will catch up.
The last piece of the ethics problem: high standards for individuals
For organizations, we can now see that the balance between ethics and profitability can be addressed by focusing on sustainability and reducing reliance on key advocates. But what about individuals, especially those in highly regulated environments who see all of this cross-organizational networking happening?
In the governance work that I do, what I see is that things go wrong when innovation happens. If the old rules are too strict, people tend to ignore outdated ones, discarding still-necessary regulations alongside them. Often, there’s little guidance, leading people to create ad hoc rules that slow innovation without effectively balancing risk against practical necessities like staying in business.
For those in regulated environments, it’s a little different. Looking back at the ROI equations, we’ve shown that the tendency must be toward behaviour that is non-transactional. Marketers are tapping into these networks because we live in a moment in history where people are building these connections as a hedge against risk. Not participating means that you aren’t getting the full benefits of knowledge and exchange required to survive and compete today. Necessarily, that means that you’re breaking a key ethical principle: to act toward the benefit of the greater good (in this case your organization) by not falling behind.
By applying the networking framework in this context, we can provide guidance to ensure decisions hold up under scrutiny, even in uncertain conditions:
Networking Framework for Regulated Environments
- Diversity: For highly regulated environments, diversity means carefully engaging with participants who bring new perspectives while ensuring compliance. Building relationships across teams or industries can help surface creative solutions that stay within regulatory bounds.
- Alignment: In regulated spaces, alignment must extend beyond shared goals to include compliance requirements. Collaborate with partners who not only share your objectives but also understand and respect the unique constraints of your environment.
- Contribution: Contributions in regulated contexts often require a balance between innovation and adherence to rules. Focus on adding value by developing expertise that bridges gaps between compliance and practical innovation, ensuring your input remains both valuable and defensible.
- Belonging: Fostering belonging in regulated settings means creating networks where participants feel secure sharing insights without fear of non-compliance. Look for alliances that prioritize mutual trust and an understanding of shared accountability within the rules.
These are just suggestions, as I’ve said before this framework describes activity happening in the real world and connects it to its core drivers. The pattern here is that the principles you or your organisation agree flow naturally from what’s going to happen inevitably. That’s good governance.
Conclusion: Building a Resilient Future Together
In navigating the ethical and practical complexities of modern networking, Allianced Cultivation offers a way forward. By focusing on long-term alignment, trust, and adaptability, these networks provide a foundation for resilience—both for organisations seeking sustainable strategies and for individuals looking to thrive in uncertainty. Through this lens, ethics becomes less a question of rules and more a natural outcome of intentional, value-driven relationships.
As we’ve explored, building these networks isn’t about immediate returns or rigid frameworks. It’s about creating systems of collaboration that grow organically, allowing for trust, shared purpose, and mutual benefit. Whether you’re managing advocacy programs, designing marketing strategies, or simply navigating your professional landscape, the principles of Allianced Cultivation can guide you toward stronger, more adaptive connections.
Here’s how to put these ideas into action:
For Organisational Leaders Thinking About Marketing
- Assess Current Networks: Identify your organisation’s key advocates and evaluate their impact on your pipeline and long-term goals.
- Diversify Advocates: Develop a plan to invest in redundancy by cultivating secondary advocates, ensuring resilience against turnover or loss.
- Focus on Long-Term Value: Shift from transactional activities to authentic engagement and building trust over time, thinking far beyond co-branded content or joint events
- Measure Redundancy and ROI: Use metrics like Advocate Dependency Ratios and Redundancy Factors to quantify the value of your network-building efforts.
- Embed Sustainability: Prioritise initiatives that align with broader organisational goals while also contributing to the resilience of your advocate networks.
For Individuals in Restricted Environments
- Map Your Existing Network: Reflect on the people in your personal and professional circles to identify shared experiences and complementary trajectories.
- Clarify Your Intentions: Consider what you hope to gain from your networks—whether it’s new perspectives, career resilience, or skills to navigate emerging trends—but remain open to unexpected opportunities.
- Build Strategic Alliances: Reach out to individuals or groups whose paths align with yours and who offer perspectives that challenge and expand your own.
- Evaluate Compatibility: Use the framework questions (e.g., “Where are you headed?” and “What do I bring?") to ensure these connections align with your long-term values and adaptability.
- Invest in Mutual Growth: Focus on genuine, enduring relationships by contributing authentically, learning from others, and creating opportunities for shared success.
In a world defined by constant change, Allianced Cultivation provides a lens to make sense of the networks many of us are already building instinctively. These connections—rooted in trust, shared growth, and adaptability—are emerging as natural responses to uncertainty, offering individuals and organisations a way to thrive in dynamic environments. My contribution has simply been to give this phenomenon a name and a framework, making it easier to understand and intentionally cultivate.
This approach isn’t about rigid frameworks or immediate returns. It’s about fostering connections that are sustainable, reciprocal, and forward-looking. By prioritising shared experiences, aligned trajectories, and authentic engagement, Allianced Cultivation empowers us to create networks that reflect our values while providing the resilience to adapt. In these alliances, we find not just stability but a collaborative and profoundly human path toward the future.