Why I Just Removed 10% Of My Network

I’m sure most users of LinkedIn have had this experience: someone you don’t know sends you a connections request and most often it doesn’t come with a personalized message. Most of these requests most likely come from legitimate users on LinkedIn yet the purpose of making the connection is often very unclear. Even you write to them they will probably answer something like: “I came across your profile and thought it was interesting hence wanted to connect” or “I read your comment in the group discussion the other day and wanted to reach out”. Let me first stress that there is nothing wrong with accepting these requests (I have done so numerous times) yet have you really asked yourself how will making this connection add value to my network?

On top of these kinds of connections if you are a blogger like myself you know that the larger network you have the higher the chance is of getting your content out to a broader audience. That means you, yourself start reaching out more or less at random to people you share groups with, had a discussion with or general connections you think will increase your chance of success (again I am also guilty of this). These kinds of connections could add very real value to your network i.e. help spread your content or maybe even help you improve your content.

However what I realized is that this is only valuable if your sole purpose is to push your content to a large user base in hope of “selling” the ideas you are writing about. All the other purposes of networking like keeping up with old colleagues, staying connected with new opportunities or developing new relationships with people you can actually meet and have discussions with about topics that will help you and them do better in your careers.

For me i.e. when I asked myself the question how all this adds value to my network I must admit that it’s all the aspects of networking that makes me spend time on developing content for LinkedIn and other social media channels. Not the sole purpose of spreading my content to the large crowds. If that happens great, but I will no longer degrade the value of my network to get there. Therefore I just removed more than 10% of my network. Connections I didn’t know personally, connections that had reached out to me at random, connections I had reached out to at random hoping to improve and spread my content. None of these connections will come back to me and ask why they are no longer part of my network.

So have you asked yourself lately what value do your connections add to your network?

Anders Liu-Lindberg is the Head of Global Finance Program Management Office at Maersk and has more than 10 years of experience working with Finance at Maersk both in Denmark and abroad. My main goal at Maersk is to create a world-class finance function not least when it comes to Business Partnering. I am the co-author of the book “Skab Værdi Som Finansiel Forretningspartner” and a long-time Finance Blogger with more than 18.000 followers.