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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-