Richard Kaufmann

I was late to the party when it came time to create Facebook account. I was still part of the generation that had to have a .edu account to register, but I was firmly on the tail end of that adoption curve. That social network had an enormous impact on the connections and relationships I fostered in the late 2000’s (still feels weird writing that as a historical point in time). Despite the enjoyment it brought me during this time, I can remember being at work endlessly scrolling instead of being productive and thinking there must be more to social interactions than this.

Not only was this a huge waste of time, but it was also impacting my perception of self. I was constantly comparing my life to others. I hated it. On a random Wednesday that was otherwise insignificant, that is the day I made the decision to quit Facebook. I made a promise to myself that I would seek out the interactions that I wanted to engage in rather than relying on Facebook to provide them to me. I would call friends instead of messaging them. I would text instead of wall post. I would have dinner parties and send thank you notes instead of this mindless scrolling that made me less and less fulfilled. I still do not send thank you notes, but my behavior did change. After watching ‘The Social Dilemma’ this weekend on Netflix, it brought those feelings back to the forefront of my consciousness. The documentary really made me evaluate how successful I had been in that promise to myself from years ago.

In my personal life, I feel like I am managing social networks much more responsibly. Professionally however, it is time for me to re-evaluate how I engage with LinkedIn. Since the start of the pandemic, feeling connected has become increasingly important for me. This is because a worldwide health crisis is an interesting problem to help solve. I love a good problem and the hacker in me wants to learn everything that I can about how people are approaching this new risk. I have been absorbing every blog post, tweet, and magazine article from leaders that I respect. I needed to learn how to keep teams engaged, vendors at bay, and myself sane during this time that is still being defined as the new normal.

I find myself in a very fortunate position within the healthcare space in solving this problem as I am a security leader at one of the country’s largest home health providers. Right now, my primary career goal is to disrupt the cult of information security within the healthcare vertical. In order to successfully take steps in completing that goal, I am putting a priority on networking and staying on top of trends within the healthcare industry.

I think one of the metrics of a great CISO should be the discomfort around saying No. How that relates to my approach to LinkedIn is that I will very rarely not accept a connection when it arrives in my inbox. I feel like saying Yes to all these connections may provide a pathway to me accomplishing that goal faster. The problem is all my connection requests recently are turning into cold calls and not people who are interested in solving problems. Don’t get me wrong, I love the hustle, I get it. For the salespeople reading these and you feel your ears turning red with embarrassment – don’t. To quote my favorite character from ‘The Wire’ – “It’s all in the game, yo”

The way that I see it, the way that we have been setup to use this platform is a little bit of the problem. The game is rigged against all of us. Salespeople are incentivized to open opportunities and I am incentivized to know what’s going on with vendors. The root of our problem starts here, we are not starting our connection off in earnest. My intention for connecting with you and your intention in connecting with me aren’t genuine, and I think it’s time we changed that.

The below approach is what I think I can do in order to make my connections more effective. My hopes are that with greater interactions this will drive more robust connections. I want to drive talent dense connections instead of high numbers of mindless consumers and producers.

Phase I – The great purge and the mindful filter.

Sorry not sorry. Chances are if you are reading this, the purge will not impact you. I have found myself in a spot where I have over 3,000 connections here on LinkedIn and most of them do not really seem like a great fit for people who can help me accomplish my goal. I am going to try and bring that list down significantly to only parties that I have worked with in the past, that are doing interesting things within their professional lives, or that I’m truly interested in working with in the future. There has been a time in my career when I used to accept any connection that came my way, just like I used to accept friend requests on Facebook from that person I kind of met that one time at that party. Again, the goal here is quality not quantity. I do not know if that is the right approach, but it feels right for now.

Phase II – Aligning Intentions for Future Connections

If I am successful in Phase I, I think the content that shows up in my timeline is a little more thought provoking, or at least that is my hope. The next thing I must solve for is making sure I know what is going on the industries I support. So as new connections requests are made, I’m going to do something that rarely happens on LinkedIn, I’m going to engage with them. Engagement looks like seeking information at the onset of the connection, rather than just clicking on “Accept” and then waiting for the inevitable sales pitch.

When a new connection request lands in my inbox I’m going to provide feedback upfront. The first draft of this feedback looks a little like this to me:

Here is a list of my priorities and the problems I’m solving right now What is driving you to connect with me – and does this connection help me solve the problems I am working on or does it help you solve the problems you are working on? Outside of work, what is your focus and what are you doing that’s interesting? That last question might draw the ire of the group because “LinkedIn is about work”. I get it and that is a fair argument. However, some of the strongest work relationships I have are created with people that are doing cool things outside of work. I like working with people who are well rounded and doing fun things in their free time, I want to know more about that as well. My intention here is to start taking the cold feeling out of cold calls. In today’s world we could all use a little bit more warmth.

Phase III – Let’s Get Weird

This is going to be the biggest lift for me, but hopefully it will work out. Once my connections are filtered and I’m engaging with people who can help me achieve my goals, I’m going to invite a handful of connections to a 30-minute meeting with me on a periodic basis. Lots of feedback that I got when I was seeking feedback for this post was around the desire for video connections. I think this is my way of helping achieve that. These quick meeting might consist of salespeople, it might be people I have worked with in the past, it might people that cold called me and never heard back. I expect this to be a little awkward and weird the first go rounds, but not only does this give my connections an opportunity to talk to me, but most likely will open their networks up to other people that they wouldn’t have been exposed to other ways. This is what quality over quantity looks like to me. If we are all here to network, let’s network.

If the above approach works, I think that my time spent on this social network is going to start helping me instead of sinking my time. One of the largest lessons I learned from ‘The Social Dilemma’ was that not only is your data the product, but your attention was also being monetized. If LinkedIn is going to make money off of my attention, I should at least be able to make progress in transforming the way that information security and compliance teams are impacting healthcare. I don’t know that if my ideas are going to work, but I do know that the first step in changing anything in life is a mindful awareness of where your attention and your intentions are being spent. I’ll check back in a few months down the road and let you know how it’s going. Until then, be well.

Richard Kaufmann

Covington, Louisiana, United States 3K followers 500+ connections

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About

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Education

Louisiana State University

Licenses & Certifications

CDPSE

ISACA

HCISPP

ISC2 MAINE CHAPTER

CRISC

ISACA

ITIL Foundations

ITIL

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