Connect The Dots. Steve Jobs talked about “connecting the dots” in his famous 2005 Stanford commencement speech – the road ahead may seem unclear, but you can’t connect the dots of your life looking forward; you can only connect them when you’re looking back. In this speech, he recalled how he dropped out of college and took a class in calligraphy, thinking it would have no practical application in his life whatsoever. Ten years later, he used the ideas he learned in his calligraphy class to help design the first Macintosh computer, complete with beautiful typefaces. If he had never dropped out of college, he would never have taken the calligraphy class, and personal computers might be vastly different today.
The same idea works in your relationship ecosystem. Some of the relationships you need in your future can be traced back to your past. The challenge is that most of us do a poor job keeping up with, nurturing, and sustaining our biggest asset – our portfolio of business relationships. I don’t know about your world – mine slows down significantly during the upcoming holidays, and I often use this time to both strategically think about our business in the New Year. A crucial part of this introspection exercise is also to reach back out to past relationships, get caught up on both sides, learn of their aspirations and priorities and how I can invest in them.
It can be helpful to remind yourself of Steve Jobs’ story when you’re struggling to reach a goal. Have faith in yourself and follow your heart, curiosity, and intubation. Never use but leverage your relationships to connect the dots between the relationships you have and the ones you need. Trust that the relationship dots in your life will connect, and you will ultimately help you reach your aspirations.
On that note, Relationship Economics, all new, completely rewritten in its 3rd edition, is being released from Wiley on Feb. 14, 2023. You can pre-order your copy on Amazon now to get all kinds of great perks.
Simply pre-order your copy and hold onto the receipt. In the coming weeks, we’ll share more details about our online training session and full-day virtual launch plans, exclusively for pre-order friends (I’m not going to dare to conflict with your romantic plans).
I can’t wait to share more with you. Best, David Nour