It’s not just who you know.

It’s what you know about who you know, and how well you’re able to connect the dots between the people you know.

There are surely a few people in your network who could help each other out.

You don’t have to know everything about each of them in order to help them realize the possibility of a connection. You just have to know enough to create the first handshake.

Who can you connect today, for no purpose other than helping them get where they’re trying to go?

We’re all familiar with the tragedy of the commons: the way resources enjoyed by all but managed by none tend to get overused to the point of failure.

The question is whether it’s inevitable. Not whether the instinct to overuse common resources is real, but whether it will certainly prevail.

The answer isn’t clear. Someone always seems to be more invested — everyone wants to keep picking tomatoes, but only a couple of people will actually show up to tend the garden every day.

But I have gotten a few tastes of true community initiatives, and they’r tantalizing. They’re not leaderless or structureless, but they are communal and sustainable because enough people value them enough to step into and out of leadership roles as needed.

If you’re lucky enough to be a part of a community like that, consider how precious it is. And if you’re a member (perhaps especially a long-suffering one) of a community that’s still stuck in free-riding mode, consider finding a way to cultivate some more gardeners.

It’s remarkably difficult to ask for what you want.

Sometimes it’s the asking. Sometimes it’s the knowing.

Either way, it isn’t easy — until you try it a few times and find momentum.

I found myself in a conversation a couple days ago about supply-chain management.

“Every business has a supply chain,” one person insisted. And failing to manage it is the easiest way to fail in business.

He’s right. Even for solopreneurs who don’t make widgets, supply-chain management counts.

My supply chain is about three feet long: from my brain to my keyboard or pen. But plenty of products (ideas, etc.) still don’t make the journey efficiently or effectively.

As the culture gets accustomed shipping that’s rapidly approaching instant and free, managing the delivery of whatever it is you ship is going to become even more important.

Sooner or later, thrashing has to give way to choosing.

And choices have to become consistent.

Some choices have to be more durable than others, and of course offerings will change.

But a certain amount of consistency is essential. If you want to be known, it’s easiest to be known for something.

How old are the models of reality you’re working with?

How often do you update them?

When you built them — or when it’s time to rebuild them — where do you go looking for parts?

Some things update quickly, like a laptop.

Some things update certainly but occasionally, like the cars you might own over a lifetime.

And some things evolve constantly yet only demand attention from time to time, like a market or a culture or a political scene.

I still pack layers for Thanksgiving like it’s 20 years ago, and I’m surprised every year that it’s not so hard to stand out at the parade for a few hours without freezing.

A lot of little changes can add up to some really big ones, but my models of the world don’t always adjust accordingly.

Just try it.

Especially if it doesn’t feel easy.

You might be surprised at who shows up and how.

HT to Bharat and Tamara.

If we’re moving more and more in the direction of a project-based economy, but entrepreneurial ability remains normally distributed, how are we going to adjust?

In other words, how can we design an economy and a society that unbundles the now-customary models of jobs and careers, yet does not require every person to start her own business?

I’m fully prepared to believe that innovative and creative talent and energy are widely available throughout the population. They might even be the greatest “resource” to be “discovered” in this century.

Going solo for a while might be the best professional-developmental move you can make — for a while. But the fact remains that most startups fail, and many, many people have too many existing obligations to break out on their own.

I’m not even close to an answer on this one. But I think it’s worth taking some really unconventional looks at the way our culture is currently set up to support this kind of work (or not).

More than two years after it was first published, I finally saw the elephant.

Specifically, the “elephant graph” of global income gains from 1988–2008, as plotted by former World Bank economist Branko Milanovic.

Have a look for yourself:

[Don’t neglect the source link, either — that’s Milanovic’s own clear and concise explanation of the graph, published at Vox EU on 1 July 2016.]

What this shows is that the world’s median income (point A) has gone up a lot over those 20 years. Ditto the global 1 percent (point C; over half of whom are Americans). And, importantly, it shows that people who were merely rich by global standards (between the mid-70th and mid-90th percentile) saw their incomes stagnate or decrease over the same time.

Combine that with the natural tendency to focus on our own fortunes — especially as perceived in comparison to our neighbors and fellow citizens — and it’s not too hard to form a hypothesis about our cultural and political fix.

The assertion I’d make is that more and more people, especially in the historically wealthy countries (i.e. the winners of the industrial revolution), are not feeling OK economically. And the less OK people feel economically, the more cultural and ultimately political unrest our societies will face.

Imagine sitting at the base of the elephant’s trunk, looking up at the tip. It’s not too hard to understand that frustration. (You might even feel some yourself.)

The challenge for industrially-rich societies is to reduce the fear and frustration of feeling left behind or left out (and the anger that inevitably follows). It is, in other words, to help more people feel more OK.

If I had to guess, we’ll continue to live in “not-normal” times until that graph starts to look substantially more like a normal distribution.

A friend invited me to reflect on my work the other day, and I mentioned that I’m at some kind of strategic inflection point in my career.

She challenged me to reconsider the idea of planning a “career.” Where, after all, was that idea coming from?

I was stumped: it’s the word I’m used to using, but I have to agree it doesn’t quite fit my situation anymore.

Like swapping “role” (or sometimes “opportunity”) for “job,” this is a clear example of a place where I need to expand the boundaries of my language in order to unframe my thinking.

Now that most of my peers and I are really confronting the reality that most of us will likely hold many roles, each for only a relatively short time, what I think we’re looking for is not so much a career as a series of projects that add up to a legacy we’re proud of.

I can’t think of anyone my age off the top of my head who’s building a career in the way that my grandfather had at GE or my uncle had in the law. The plan isn’t to find the right organization, but rather (at least among those who are stepping into the new way) to organize the opportunities that will help us grow and give back in the ways we want.

Simply changing premises — from planning my career to looking for the next interesting and impactful project — might turn out to be the real strategic shift after all.