It’s a book about change, something on our agendas for 2015. Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point is an examination of the social epidemics that surround us.
In particular, it’s a book that presents a new way of understanding why change often happens as quickly and as unexpectedly as a sneeze. Small, barely noticeable changes will amass into a powerful trend.
How did Jeff Bezos capture our nation’s attention when he described how our Amazon online order will arrive within minutes via drone delivery? As a former bookseller, Amazon is a veritable retail box store that understood that consumers wanted their order delivered quickly.
It’s uncanny how new ideas or new business solutions emerge – like outbreaks of the common cold, out of nowhere and at mach speed.
In 2005, Jeff Howe of Wired magazine coined the term, crowd sourcing, defined as an ability to get solutions from amateurs or volunteers, working in their spare time, or from experts or small businesses which were unknown to the initiating organization.
The flattening of the competitive landscape is a social epidemic, don’t you think? Malcolm Gladwell thinks so.
In today’s dynamic economy, anybody can wake up in the morning with an idea, design a product online, get bids to manufacture it, crowd source the financing needed, promote it and arrange shipping – in the cloud—all without ever getting up from the kitchen table.
And here is my main point: Industries have become boundless and permeable. Competitive threats and transformative opportunities can come from anywhere.
Will you have the right tribe to strategically coalesce the right people to anticipate or respond to your next tipping point?
Here’s what to do, right now.
Stay relevant with your LinkedIn community – your connections, your competitors and your industry – by being active on LinkedIn. As someone who earns her living through social media, I am continually surprised by those who click in seldom, maybe monthly. LinkedIn is a consortium of ideas, accessibility to contagious leaders who write profound articles, serving up a dish of insight with factual croutons on top with a side of infographics – pictures to clarify their words and make it easier for the 55% of us who are visual learners.
Do small goods.
Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, recommends a daily regime of sharing someone else’s post with your connections, liking the post written by one of your centers of influence or commenting on an article.
In fact, you can spot several “tipping points” if you treat your LinkedIn activity as your career caretaker: 30 minutes each day, a daily habit just like the Stephen Covey rule book portends.
Follow your favorite leader.
Find her or him with a keyword search adding in title and geography.
Get into one of the two million groups and become a speed reader with the daily entries. Here’s where you might spot a trend within your industry and learn from others’ missteps, when insight is at its peak from the lesson learned. Invaluable lessons shared by your peers to spare others, you included.
Or you can work well beyond retirement age, while others become more adept at spotting the next tipping point.
