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Secrets of the Next Wave<br />

Dear 21 year old me.<br />

Joshua Cooper Ramo<br />

Have you ever considered just<br />

how you might start such a<br />

letter to your younger self?<br />

The question is a trick, of<br />

course. It’s a way to ask: What<br />

has the experience of career and life so<br />

far really taught you? What single secret<br />

might you wish to slip, like a fortune cookie<br />

paper, into the pocket of your younger self?<br />

Or, more practically: What do you want<br />

to tell your 21-year-old child heading to a<br />

fi rst job? The baby-faced executive working<br />

in your offi ce? The one running your<br />

company? Or even, perhaps more usefully,<br />

this: What can I do differently in the future?<br />

If you had to make a fast and<br />

intense study of the secret to success<br />

now, you could do worse<br />

than scanning the names and<br />

lives that follow on LinkedIn’s<br />

2016 Next Wave list. The list<br />

itself is kind of a miracle of technology.<br />

Ages ago I was an editor<br />

at TIME Magazine and we<br />

always crabbed together those<br />

fancy-sounding annual Time 100<br />

lists with far less than the level<br />

6<br />

Kzn Lifestyle Magazine • Issue 14<br />

of intellectual rigor you might<br />

have hoped: “Hey, let’s add that<br />

Peruvian ceviche master after the<br />

Prime Minister of Australia?!”<br />

And, sure enough, an artisan of<br />

fluke, lime and chilies would<br />

make it on the list. Ahead of Bill<br />

Gates. Buzz sold.<br />

The Next Wave is different.<br />

It’s an attempt to use data to fillet<br />

out of the world around us a<br />

sense of what’s working now.<br />

And, by implication, what’s not.<br />

Our world runs on networks after<br />

all—for medicine, finance, transportation,<br />

just about everything.<br />

These networks can be studied<br />

and measured and understood.<br />

So why not use them to tell us<br />

something about work?<br />

As you read through the Next<br />

Wave list (or if you’re on it!)<br />

you’ll discover one thing pretty<br />

quickly. Animating all the brilliant<br />

ideas, the moving personal<br />

stories, and the historicscale<br />

ambitions of each Next<br />

Waver is this single insight into<br />

what makes a powerful career<br />

now: We are what we are connected<br />

to. I don’t just mean connections<br />

to people. I mean the<br />

ideas you and I are tied to, good<br />

or bad. The experiences. The<br />

hopes. The puzzles we work on<br />

as we drive or run or consume<br />

our morning coffee. This list is a<br />

stark lesson that if you’re making<br />

an inventory of your life now<br />

the right place to start isn’t with a<br />

measure of what you have in the<br />

bank. Or the market cap of your<br />

firm. Or even your resume. No.<br />

Try this much simpler and more<br />

powerful puzzle: What am I connected<br />

to? The people on the list<br />

here: They have 25 times more<br />

connections than the average<br />

member on LinkedIn.<br />

I have spent a good part of<br />

the last few years trying to sort<br />

out why some people and companies<br />

and movements succeed<br />

now, while others fizzle out or<br />

implode. It’s something I think<br />

about a great deal, not merely in<br />

my day job as CEO of Kissinger<br />

Associates or as a board member<br />

at Starbucks and FedEx, but<br />

also in considering politics and<br />

history and economics. Why do<br />

some nations fail? What’s happening<br />

in our country now? I<br />

have found that success today<br />

in any endeavor is marked by a<br />

kind of intuition about connection.<br />

You and I look at a car and<br />

think: “Car”. The Uber guys look<br />

at it and see a revolution. The<br />

White House looked at ISIS and<br />

said, at first, “amateurs”, because<br />

they couldn’t quite make out the<br />

webs of power really at work.<br />

In my own career, if I’m honest,<br />

the biggest wins have come<br />

from connection—not inspiration<br />

or genius or drive. So if I were<br />

speaking to 21-year old me? The<br />

message would be fast: You are<br />

what you are connected to.<br />

What the Next Wave list cel-

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