It’s easy to tell ahead of time that you can make an impact as a blogger or a startup founder or a non-profit leader? Hardly—those are all high-risk endeavors, especially in the digital domain: many smart bloggers with something great to say never reach a large audience; many even fail to a modest but interested audience.
I don’t have subject matter knowledge (and hope to learn more) but intuitively having an outsized impact in a corporate setting seems more conjunctive, with being in the right place at the right time playing more of a role. Can you give some examples of people who have had outsized impacts in corporate settings, and how they did what they did?
Stability and consistency are the rewards of traditional, ordinary careers; and for many people those are excellent virtues. Make sure your clients understand this. Entrepreneurship, in particular, requires a certain degree of hubris. Society as a whole gains from that hubris, and in selected sectors and times and places the would-be entrepreneurs gain in expectation, but “How would I handle failure” should be a question that anyone embarking on such a path should sincerely ask themselves first”.
Note that many of the people on my list have done what they’ve done on their spare time, while maintaining a stable job. We do raise awareness of the risks to clients who are thinking of deviating from conventional paths. See, for example, Stay mainstream until you have demonstrated success doing unusual stuff.
Non-tech entrepreneurship. And in the domain of non-profits, locally-oriented ones. They can’t impact as many people, but impact is often greater and more immediate, and your impact is more immediately visible to yourself. For some people being able to closely observe their own impact is very motivating.
Yes, these are good examples. We’ve been thinking about non-tech entrepreneurship; have thought less about locally-oriented non-profits. Can you give an example of a locally-oriented nonprofit that’s had an outsized impact? (Not a rhetorical question.)
In general, however, at a young age foundational skills and opening their minds are more important than any particular direction (though a particular cause/direction can be very motivating).
Whatever they seem to have closed their mind to without proper consideration, that’s what you can target for each individual.
This is in line with what we’re doing; we’re working to communicate the pros and cons of embarking on different paths. For some advisees this may nudge them in less impactful directions, but we expect the overall trend to be in the direction of more impact, because of people’s desire to make a difference.
Okay, good. It seemed like I was picking up a bit of silicon-valley-style-impact centrism, and I leapt on it maybe more than I should have.
Stay mainstream until you’ve demonstrated success in the unconventional is advice I’ve heard from many successful heterodox academics, so I absolutely believe it’s excellent advice.
Harlem childrens’ fund is a very local charity. It’s promoting its ideas globally, but the actual work is going on locally. Any other sort of individual outreach/social-work-like charity tends to be local (think homeless shelter’s women’s shelters, community centers, etc). Many legal aid organizations are fairly local, or are highly autonomous regional branches of national organizations. A lot of aid can only legitimately be delivered face-to-face (even if many of these organizations could benefit from digital technologies, they will still remain face-to-face at their core).
In corporate roles, there’s many ways to make an impact, especially if your organization is fairly functional. If you’re one of the better salespeople in your org, multiply your impact by mentoring others. If you’re in a functional unit serving others inside your business, you probably have more requests than you could satisfy in a lifetime. Figure out which ones will make the most impact for the least effort. I’m not really talking about outsize impact, I’m just talking about better-than-average. In a low risk environment.
I don’t have subject matter knowledge (and hope to learn more) but intuitively having an outsized impact in a corporate setting seems more conjunctive, with being in the right place at the right time playing more of a role. Can you give some examples of people who have had outsized impacts in corporate settings, and how they did what they did?
Note that many of the people on my list have done what they’ve done on their spare time, while maintaining a stable job. We do raise awareness of the risks to clients who are thinking of deviating from conventional paths. See, for example, Stay mainstream until you have demonstrated success doing unusual stuff.
Yes, these are good examples. We’ve been thinking about non-tech entrepreneurship; have thought less about locally-oriented non-profits. Can you give an example of a locally-oriented nonprofit that’s had an outsized impact? (Not a rhetorical question.)
We encourage our advisees to develop broad knowledge; see for example our Core reading recommendations.
This is in line with what we’re doing; we’re working to communicate the pros and cons of embarking on different paths. For some advisees this may nudge them in less impactful directions, but we expect the overall trend to be in the direction of more impact, because of people’s desire to make a difference.
Okay, good. It seemed like I was picking up a bit of silicon-valley-style-impact centrism, and I leapt on it maybe more than I should have.
Stay mainstream until you’ve demonstrated success in the unconventional is advice I’ve heard from many successful heterodox academics, so I absolutely believe it’s excellent advice.
Harlem childrens’ fund is a very local charity. It’s promoting its ideas globally, but the actual work is going on locally. Any other sort of individual outreach/social-work-like charity tends to be local (think homeless shelter’s women’s shelters, community centers, etc). Many legal aid organizations are fairly local, or are highly autonomous regional branches of national organizations. A lot of aid can only legitimately be delivered face-to-face (even if many of these organizations could benefit from digital technologies, they will still remain face-to-face at their core).
In corporate roles, there’s many ways to make an impact, especially if your organization is fairly functional. If you’re one of the better salespeople in your org, multiply your impact by mentoring others. If you’re in a functional unit serving others inside your business, you probably have more requests than you could satisfy in a lifetime. Figure out which ones will make the most impact for the least effort. I’m not really talking about outsize impact, I’m just talking about better-than-average. In a low risk environment.