The Networksage: Realize Your Network Superpower

By Glenna Crooks PhD

Do you have big dreams? Are you working to create financial security for your family? Are you destined to be a leader in your community or field? Do you have a big idea to benefit humanity? Are you building a legacy? In The NetworkSage, author Dr. Glenna Crooks shows you arent alone on your journey, whatever it may be.

She discusses how you live life supported by eight network groupsafamily network, a health and vitality network, a social and community network, and a career network, to name a few and you support other people as part of their networks, as well. The NetworkSage shows the importance of networks for success, and it offers specific ideas about how to manage them well from people who have done it, succeeding in improving their health, personal relationships, family life, income, and careers.

Crooks offers a road map to help understand networks in a new way, and she introduces ACTSage, a three-step process to help you become aware of your connections, gain clarity about your needs, and transform your life. She shows you how to become a NetworkSage. The wisdom you gain will empower and transform you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 12, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532029639

Glenna Crooks PhD

Glenna Crooks, PhD, has been called a one-woman think tank for her work as an innovator in education and health care. In her day job, she organizes chaos and solves complex problems. She served as an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, a Fortune 50 global vice president, and an adviser to business and government leaders. She received the Surgeon Generals Medallion for public health contributions and was named a Disruptive Woman to Watch. Among her philanthropic efforts, she supports projects benefiting children. Visit her online at www.glennacrooks.com.

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Copyright © 2018 Glenna Crooks.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-2962-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-2963-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017915099

iUniverse rev. date: 01/10/2018

Other Books

Covenants: Inspiring the Soul of Healing

Strategic Grantseeking for Community-Based Organizations

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Except for the author’s own personal story, all names and identifying characteristics of individuals, families, or companies mentioned have been changed to protect their privacy.

To superheroes

especially

Mom and Dad

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Key Points

Introduction

On Overload

And Underresourced

Finding a Way Out

A New Road Map

Key Points

Part 1 Superheroes and the NetworkSage Road Map

Chapter 1 Superhero to the Rescue

Working at the Edge

Pit Crew Test Drive

Mind Shifting

Time for a Tune-Up

Shifting into Higher Gear

Lessons Learned

Road Maps Followed

Hidden Assets Revealed

Key Points

Chapter 2 Connections Fuel Your Future

Your Social Nature

Good Connections Help

Bad Connections Harm

Loneliness Hurts

Connections Influence

Modern-Day Social Complexity

Survival Instincts Collide

Dunbar’s Number

Connection Dynamics

Today’s Connection Complications

Your Number

Social Media Number

Key Points

Chapter 3 You Belong in the Driver’s Seat

Appreciate Your Uniqueness

Own Your Chief-Connector Role

Distinguish Connection Types

Distinction, Not Discrimination

Key Points

Part 2 Exploring Network Territory

Five Birthright Networks

Three Coming-of-Age Networks

Chapter 4 Family Networks

A Young NetworkSage

Network Role and Value

Inside Family Networks

Exploring Your Network

Key Points

Chapter 5 Health and Vitality Networks

Dr. Mom

Network Role and Value

Looking Good

Engaging This Network

Inside Health and Vitality Networks

Exploring Your Network

Key Points

Chapter 6 Education and Enrichment Networks

The Power of Networks in Action

Network Role and Value

Inside Education and Enrichment Networks

Exploring Your Network

Key Points

Chapter 7 Spiritual Networks

Missing Peace

Network Role and Value

Inside Spiritual Networks

Exploring Your Network

Key Points

Chapter 8 Social and Community Networks

Tupperware Triage

Network Role and Value

Inside Social and Community Networks

Exploring Your Network

Key Points

Chapter 9 Career Networks

Carl’s Clarity

Network Role and Value

Inside Career Networks

Exploring Your Network

Key Points

Chapter 10 Home and Personal Affairs Network

An (Almost) Mountain Cabin

Network Role and Value

Inside This Network

Exploring Your Network

Key Points

Chapter 11 Ghost Networks

Invisible Support

Network Role and Value

Remembering Ghosts

You Are a Ghost Too

Inside Ghost Networks

Exploring Your Network

Key Points

Part 3 How to ACTSage

Chapter 12 ACTSage Step 1: Awareness

Laura’s Big Reveal

Hiding in Plain Sight

Make a List

What’s Next?

Create an Organization Chart

Draw a Mind Map

Key Points

Chapter 13 ACTSage Step 2: Clarity

Pathways to Clarity

Network Clarity

Connection Clarity

Life Event Clarity

Life Plan Clarity

Key Points

Chapter 14 ACTSage Step 3: Transformation

Selecting Transformation Targets

Facing Resistance

Transformation Actions

Key Points

Part 4 Beyond Your Networks

Chapter 15 Transform Our Collective Future

The Blueberry Connection

Be a Village

Build a New-Era Village

New Lessons Learned

Envision the Future

Your Life, Your Way

Key Points

References

Realize Your Network Superpower Key Points

Acknowledgments

About The Author

Foreword

IN HER LATEST BOOK, The NetworkSage: Realize Your Network Superpower, Dr. Glenna Crooks describes automobile racing as a team sport. While the race car driver is the apparent hero on race day, the win depends at least as much on the efforts of a finely tuned, supportive pit crew.

Just so, she goes on to explain, our own success and the quality of our life experiences are dependent not only on our own efforts but also on the contributions of our own pit crews. She has immersed herself in the study of these pit crews for many years, realizing along the way they were networks. Glenna is a NetworkSage.

Each of us lives life supported by several network groups—a family network, a health and vitality network, a social and community network, and a career network, to name a few—and we are the pit crew in other people’s networks as well.

In this book, we learn how to become aware of all the people in ours. We also learn the role that each of our networks and the players in them serves. In terms of action points, readers will learn the importance of structuring and managing networks for success, and they will get specific ideas about how to do so from people who have done it, succeeding in improving their health, personal relationships, family life, income, and careers and retirement and gaining peace of mind.

As a psychologist, most of my training focused on the study of the individual. How much more meaningful it is, as this book clearly elucidates, to think of individuals contextualized in terms of their networks, its players, and their interactions.

As the former CEO of a company with 250 employees, I believe I would have been far more effective in my job had I had the guidance of this book available to me at the time. It would have helped me to structure and manage the players in my business network far more effectively.

As a consultant in the health and wellness vertical, I firmly believe that one must become a NetworkSage to truly understand this field and its complexities. Issues like chronic disease management, patient drug adherence, or aging well, for example, can only be wrestled with meaningfully by taking the patient’s networks into consideration.

Beyond health care, this book has other implications as well. Each of the eight networks Glenna describes has consequences for the health, happiness, success, and life satisfaction we all want for ourselves, our loved ones, and one another at every stage of life. It’s time we take account of that.

Glenna has been one of my favorite thinkers and speakers. She got my attention years ago with a brilliant presentation about another one of her books, Covenants: Inspiring the Soul of Healing, and it changed my way of thinking. This book, I think, might well be the sequel to that one.

Bottom line. She’s once again fundamentally changed my worldview in The NetworkSage: Realize Your Network Superpower. I’m betting something similar will happen to you too!

—Richard B. Vanderveer, PhD

Preface

I LIKE ACTION MOVIES and superheroes. Superman, Batman, and Jason Bourne are thrilling, but Iron Man is my all-time favorite. An Iron Man marathon would be my idea of a great date night.

Iron Man had not yet been released in 2007, but I’d seen the trailer, so it’s no surprise I noticed interviews with Robert Downey Jr. as they appeared on newsstands. I was already a fan.

Something he said at the time transformed my life. It was this: he had a pit crew of people helping him. In W magazine, he named a sensei, a psychiatrist, healing therapists, and his wife. In Time magazine, he mentioned his power-flow yoga teacher. His rationale for needing a pit crew? He was not a Model T, he explained, but a Ferrari, and it took a pit crew to keep him on the road.

First I reacted: If you’re a Ferrari, I’m at least a Maserati!

Then I reflected: You’re right! Busy people do need support from others to travel the road of life!

Next I wondered: Who’s in my pit crew?

Eventually, I worried: What about my family and friends? What about my clients? I’m in their pit crews! How well am I helping them navigate the busy lanes they travel?

Some people say that when the student is ready, the teacher appears, and that was the case for me. Mr. Downey Jr., brief as his comments were, piqued my curiosity. Then he taught me important lessons. He shifted my mind-set and showed me a new way of seeing life, one that fits today’s complicated, fast-moving world. He shattered a long-held belief that I should be self-sufficient and independent, qualities I had been raised to value.

He was right; people need support from others, and lots of it, especially when they lead busy lives and have competing responsibilities in their families, careers, and communities. Support helps each of us individually and, in turn, helps all of us collectively. It was a big lesson. It made me think about my life differently, and my way of life changed because of it. Then others’ lives changed too, and the NetworkSage road map emerged. In this book, you’ll see how that happened.

An African proverb says, If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. Going together is how we live our lives as humans. We are, right from the start, social. The collective cooperation and interpersonal support we offer one another is the engine that drives humankind’s progress and helps us live long, healthy, high-quality lives. How far you go—and I would argue how well and how fast—depends not only on you as an individual but on others too.

It is not solely your own health, education, and financial capital that determine your success. It is human capital too. In fact, more than any other resource at your disposal, human capital—yours and others’—will help you develop your talents, find your purpose, realize your potential, and achieve your dreams. Therein lies the superpower in your networks.

As your guide, I developed a road map you can follow and, better yet, one that you can adapt as you learn about it and use it to chart your own journey. It has six key features, and knowing about them in advance will provide you with signposts for what lies ahead. These include

1. my unshakable belief in your virtually unlimited human potential and the often underappreciated value of human capital;

2. our need, as humans, to connect with others and our human limits as we try, especially in an increasingly complicated world;

3. the imperative that you be in the driver’s seat, not out of selfishness but born of your uniqueness as an individual and your place as connector-in-chief among all those in your networks;

4. the value of focusing on all your networks and the need for an organizing framework to do that well;

5. the importance of knowing how to ACTSage—that is being aware of your connections, having clarity about what you need and want from them, and using that information to transform your life to live better, healthier, happier, and more successfully in whatever you endeavor; and

6. the need for you and any road maps you use to be flexible and adapt to your circumstances and the world as both change.

This book addresses each one. Part 1 lays the groundwork, tells the story about how the journey began, and provides an overview of the key features of the NetworkSage road map that developed along the way. Part 2 describes the organizing framework of the networks that support you, the role each one plays, and ways you can explore yours. Part 3 describes the three ACTSage action steps that help you find and use network superpower. Part 4 brings the journey full circle, with reminders that not only do you rely on others but they rely on you and we all rely on one another.

Are you ready to begin? Would you like to go far and fast? Do you have big dreams? Are you building a legacy? Creating financial security for your family? Destined to be a leader in your community or professional field? Pushing beyond barriers of gender, gender identity, racial, ethnic, or disability that held you back to become a model of success for others? Hatching a big idea that will solve problems faced by humanity today? Providing care for a loved one? Building a new life for your three decades as a retiree? If so, you need to stay on track. Seeing life through the eyes of my favorite superhero gave me some ideas about pit crews—networks—and a NetworkSage road map that can help.

I’d like to know about your dreams, learn about your experiences, and hear about how you realized the superpower in your networks. Get in touch at www.sagemylife.com, and while you are there, look for additional stories, templates to help you gather and display network information, and resources for the journey ahead.

Key Points

• Human potential is virtually unlimited, and the value of human capital is underappreciated.

• As humans, we need to connect with others, yet there are limits to doing that well.

• You must be in the driver’s seat, not out of selfishness but born of your uniqueness and your role as connector-in-chief.

• A network information architecture helps organize networks to help recall the people in them.

• ACTSage is a three-step process to become aware of your connections, gain clarity about your needs, and transform your networks.

• You and any road maps you use must be flexible and adapt to your circumstances and the world as both change.

Introduction

IN 2007 WHEN ROBERT DOWNEY JR. talked about pit crews, I understood his reasoning. I needed a pit crew too. I had not been aware of how much, though, until his comments in those interviews. At the time, I had a suburban home with gardens I tended myself and was active in my church and community. I was founder and CEO of a global strategy firm working in public health. I did not have a family of my own, but I had been claimed by several as an adopted grandma, a role I loved. Young people sought me out as a mentor. Friends and clients sought me out as a confidante. Yes, I was busy, and I understood.

On Overload

In fact, I wasn’t just busy. I was overloaded. It wasn’t the first time, and I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Others I knew—teens, college students, stay-at-home moms, colleagues, and retirees—were busy and felt overloaded too. Everyone, it seemed, was balancing important family, friend, school, career, and community responsibilities.

If that sounds familiar, you know how being busy feels. You might also know how it feels when even being happily busy leads to overload. Perhaps this happened slowly as small, incremental household tasks, job assignments, friends’ needs, or volunteer projects came your way. They didn’t seem burdensome at first, but eventually they added up. Soon, your to-do list got far too long. Or perhaps it happened suddenly when life dealt you a wild card. It might have been a delightful wild card, by the way: a new relationship, a new baby, a new job, or a new retirement adventure. It might also have been a difficult one: a job loss, a serious illness, a caregiving crisis, or the death of a loved one.

Regardless of how it happens, overload has negative consequences. The stress of it triggers fight-or-flight reactions and leaves you with little time to pause, think well, sleep enough, or have fun. It gets in the way of your relationships, causing you to neglect those most important to you, including yourself and your needs. At times like that, it is tempting to work even harder and sleep even less to push through the obstacles. Do that for more than a very brief time, however, and you risk burnout. It is also tempting to deny the seriousness of the situation and hope troubles will magically disappear. Do that, and you can risk being unprepared for an even more troublesome outcome.

If this has happened to you even once, you know what comes next. You fall even further behind at work or at home or lose touch with family and friends. You are physically present but not emotionally available. You find it hard to distinguish between the important commitments you must keep and those you can renegotiate. You neglect your health and risk your job, your family’s stability, and economic security. You feel frustrated and become angry easily. If you get to this point, you’ve run out of fuel, and when that happens, everyone suffers—especially you.

It’s natural to be discouraged at times like that. It’s common to feel abandoned and disconnected from others. It’s possible to have an existential crisis and want to quit a job, sell a house (or build a tiny one), abandon responsibilities, and go off the grid. If you’ve ever felt that way, you’re not alone. I know. I’ve been there myself, and others have confided in me that they have too. Though we may be tempted to cut and run, deep down we know that isn’t what we really want. We love our families, our friends, and the people we serve through our careers. We want to make the world a better place. We have a sense of honor and want to keep the promises we’ve made. We don’t want an escape route, just a better, wiser way to live.

And Underresourced

In the past, I believed overload was caused by some combination of big dreams and uncontrollable life circumstances. Now that I know about pit crews, I see the problem differently: the way we live our busy lives hasn’t adapted to the reality of today’s increasingly complex world and fragmented communities. Too many people are trying to do too much, too fast, and, worse yet, too alone. Are you one of them? I was.

Our ancestors lived in simpler times and could rely on support