Small is the New Big

Every time I hear the unemployment report on NPR’s Marketplace, I get exasperated. The numbers are usually followed by a commentator discussing what is going to make big business hire more people. This is usually followed by a discussion of national policy regarding the global terms of trade. You would think that the radio programmers, at least, would notice this repetition that generates nothing new; no new insights, no new policies, and most importantly, no new jobs.

It’s because it’s over. Did you notice? History books written 200 years from now will mark some year in my lifetime as the emergence of a new age. It will appear as the next step in transformation of our society, economy, philosophy, and how and what human beings know, like the transition from an agrarian society into an industrial one.

I happen to have had the opportunity to speak with a State Governor last week and I posed him this paradigm. It seems that all policy discussions of the American economy at the federal and state levels are focused on returning to an industrial era standard of centralization, mass production, and global distribution. Observation of what’s actually happening is de-centralized, customized, and connected. “How do we change the conversation?” I asked. The Governor’s response was that they didn’t know what it was going to take – they were trying but weren’t even sure they had identified the variables yet: taxes, employment regulations, communication infrastructure, and immigration all came up in the conversation.

Whether you’re currently happily employed, unhappily employed, or looking for what’s next for you, you are participating in this transformation. You could be a cog in a wheel at a company still seeing a world of widgets. You could be re-creating yourself because, at your impetus or at someone else’s, the cogish role you once filled is no longer available or desirable. You could be part of a team that trying to figure out how to discover and respond to these new opportunities. You could be leading the change — looking to discover variables for leverage in your own de-centralized, custom, and connected operation.

Maybe the way out is not a return to what once worked, but the creation of something new. There was a time when communities were insular and self-sufficient because they had to be. This is not that. Although it does involve community at a deeply connected level. This is using global communication and access to create efficient and effective products and services for a market that needs exactly what you have to offer. This is beyond niche. This is about finding your customers and being the vendor of their dreams. Some enterprises will benefit by returning to local, most obviously, food production. Others will expand beyond what was once possible for a small shop by serving an international, global market in a connected, customized way. I’m not talking about going big. Small is the new big. Even big is growing small. Innovative companies are changing their structure from perpetual departments to project-specific work groups comprised of the right combination of individual talent and team dynamics.

This shift, just like the one from agriculture to industry, provides a wider range of options and more freedom for each one. Now is the time to identify your greatest strengths, meaning the things that you do that make you stronger, and offering those things to your customers, whether it’s an internal corporate customer, or an external one. If you’re currently in transition or thinking about making a move, consider the breadth of ways you could provide a valuable service or product in this flexible, connected way.

What is it that you have that can serve, not the world, but some part of the world, the part you care about, the part that will love what you have to offer, the part that will recognize you as one of their own? Discover this and you will not only be prepared for what’s next, you’ll be creating it.