I’ve been in meetings where we realize that we need more information or an alternative supplier for a part, then within 10 minutes we have that new person on a call or chatting with us over WeChat, and later that day we have an answer to our question. I can access a lot of this network from my home in California by texting with my friends and business contacts over WeChat that I’ve amassed over the last 10 years - I have over 900 contacts on WeChat and probably 400+ group chats. I am careful to not just defer tasks and meetings to ‘the next trip’ because that would slow things down, but traveling there is a great forcing function - nothing speeds up task like an upcoming in-person meeting with the client (me!