If the world is small, the business world is microscopic.
This fact should encourage you, but it may also scare the daylights out of you.
Good news about your accomplishments will spread, but at nowhere near the pace of bad news. Your reputation precedes you, as the saying goes.
Let’s look at the positive side.
This story helps illustrate the smallness of planet earth… I was sitting at the Anchorage airport, having facilitated leadership programs at the North Slope, Alaska. (It’s a long way from anywhere!) It was my first trip to Alaska, and I knew no one in Anchorage, let alone anyone sitting at the airport at four o’clock in the morning. The royal wedding was being broadcast on the screens in the terminal, and the lady next to me started to chat.
Apparently I have an accent, and she wanted to talk about my life in England. It was early, and I wanted to see the dress before boarding, so we chatted. Eventually the conversation turned to current things. I shared that I lived in Colorado. She knew someone in Colorado . . . it turned out that her friend was someone I know well.
We immediately went from strangers with nothing in common to acquaintances with someone in common.
This is just one of hundreds of chance encounters I have experienced in my travels around the world—encounters that only serve to reinforce that we are just one conversation away from reaching our dreams, or at least taking a step closer to them.
If we take the time to talk to those around us, we can cultivate relationships that result in a positive and lasting impact for both of us.