Business Insight Zone

What we mean when we say “the world.”

Reading the Freakonomics blog this morning, I had to shake my head at the dyspeptic comment of a British reader who took offense at Stephen Dubner’s hyperbolic use of “shocked the world” in the phrase “After the Dolphins shocked the world by beating the Patriots . . .” Here’s the key bit:

We weren’t shocked, here in the UK by this result. In fact we didn’t care. Neither do we care about the results of the “World Series” which we note with interest that only US teams are invited to compete in.

Set aside the sneering tone and focus on the wrong-headed reference to the World Series. With due apologies to the excellent professional league in Japan, in the world of baseball, the greatest concentration of the greatest players — from all countries — plays in the Major Leagues.

In fact, a momentary glance at the rosters of the Rays (which we discussed recently) and the Phillies reveals players from Australia, Canada, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Japan, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela, as well as all parts of the United States. While we’re at it, the sports of cricket and rugby hold quadrennial “World Cups” with nowhere near the global participation of (soccer) football’s World Cup.

And so what?

The rugby event’s claim to “world” status, to pick one example, ought to pass without objection because, by any fair-minded standard, it brings together the best national teams from the rugby-playing world — Australia, Britain, France, New Zealand, etc. — and its winner can legitimately claim to be the best national rugby team in the world

Maybe this point is obvious, but I think it applies bears repeating:

We all live in many separate “worlds.”

This may apply especially to business. Consider just the worlds of technology, entertainment, big business, philanthropy, and politics — and then consider examples of heavy hitters in each sphere:

• Technology: Tim Berners-Lee, Linus Torvalds.
• Entertainment: Christina Aguilera, Will Smith.
• Big business: Jamie Dimon, Steve Schwarzman.
• Philanthropy: Paul Farmer, Melinda Gates.
• Politics: John McCain, Barack Obama. (Maybe you’ve heard of them?)

Now consider examples of those who wield influence in more than one of these spheres:

• Technology + Entertainment: John Lasseter.
• Technology + Big business: Mark Hurd.
• Entertainment + Big business: David Geffen.
• Big business + Philanthropy: Eli Broad.
• Philanthropy + Politics: Bill Clinton.
• Technology + Entertainment + Big business: Steve Jobs.
• Big business + Philanthropy + Politics: George Soros.

We could go on, but you get the idea: there are worlds within worlds, and some people who loom large in one have no standing in another. Others move between worlds easily.

Niche-worlds abound.

Don’t think that you’re ever going to get your head all the way around all the worlds you’re in, much less all the worlds you could be in, and very much less all the worlds that exist. Consider my own work as a blogger and some of the worlds it touches.

There’s a tech-and-media world in which Michael Arrington is very powerful — so much so that people go out of their way to curry his favor or to elicit a mention on his blog Techcrunch. But my mom, for instance, (a) doesn’t know who Arrington is, (b) doesn’t care, and (c) doesn’t need to. I’m sure her lack of interest does not keep Mr. Arrington up nights — nor should it.

In the blogosphere, Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki stride the land like giants. Same for the authors of BoingBoing. If these folks include a link to your blog, you’d better hope your server can handle the strain. Yet recently, I got a puzzled look from a Hoover’s colleague — who’s in the online business, mind you, and the author of a blog himself — when I referred to BoingBoing. He’d never heard of it. And you know what? It doesn’t matter.

In the past I’ve traded blog posts with Floyd Norris, one of the deans of financial journalism. I bet he doesn’t subscribe to BoingBoing, and I’ll bet that at least some of BoingBoing’s writers couldn’t pick Norris’s name out of a lineup. C’est la vie.

So what do we DO with these thoughts?

First, we can try not to get dyspeptic when someone refers to the “world” in a way that we might perceive as a slight. Up to a point, I’m sympathetic to that Freakonomics commenter, since I know that Americans sometimes are guilty of thinking that all the earth’s activity revolves around the United States. But please — leave room for other people to have their own worlds that have nothing to do with you.

Second, take a few minutes to think about what your own worlds are. Some obvious candidates:

• Your family.
• Your company, department, or team.
• Your professional organization.
• Your clubs, whether that means Rotary or the garden club or the PTA or your group of jogging buddies.
• Your circle(s) of friends.
• Your church.
• Your physical neighborhood.

Another way of thinking about these is to frame these in terms of which audiences you touch.

Third, think about how you can have the most impact within each of these worlds. Probably you’re not going to end up reshaping big worlds like Steve Jobs has with technology, entertainment, and business. That’s okay; you can still reshape some of the worlds you inhabit.

Here’s what I recommend:

Within the “worlds” you care about, make your NAME synonymous with your ROLE.

Steve Jobs is formally the CEO of Apple and a board member of Disney. But forget that: he’s STEVE JOBS. Madonna could list her occupation as “singer” or “entertainer,” but more to the point she’s MADONNA. In the open-source world, Linus Torvalds is just LINUS.

You and I probably won’t have that kind of reach in the grand scheme of things, but we can try to mimic it within our own little niche-worlds. There’s value, not to mention job security, in having enough standing in your niche that people say, “Oh, I always defer to Sharon on questions like that” or “There’s no point speculating — Dave will know what to do about this.” You’re not just you . . . you’re YOU.

But enough of my philosophizing:

What worlds do YOU inhabit?
How might you inhabit them better?

~

(Image from NASA.)

Category: The business of sports, The language of business, The working life