The Paradox of Place

Your Town is Your Office....but also, Birds of a Feather....

Warnick asks: “If you can work from anywhere, why does it matter where you work?”

And then helps answer it. I’ll add my thoughts as well.?

“Many of the 36.2 million Americans expected to be working remotely by 2025 (a figure up 87 percent since before the pandemic) are place agnostic now too, convinced that the whole point of being able to work anywhere is that it doesn’t really matter where you live, at least not for your job. “

Who becomes an inventor in America? People who cluster together and amplify each other’s ideas. Think Cherry Hill, New Jersey during Edison’s time, Renaissance Florence, or young American Enlightenment on the East Coast.?

Scientific innovation is one of the key drivers of the US economic growth and researchers have pinpointed environmental factors that might make someone more likely to innovate. Harvard's economists identified the “outcome of exposure” such as patents filed tended to be related to areas that were hot in a particular type of innovation, computers in Silicon Valley and medical devices in Minnesota for example, as proof that places shape innovation, and it creates a cycle of people shaping places shaping people shaping innovation. (Still tracking?)?

Our communities shape our opportunities and it seems the formula looks like this

Ambition + place + proper nourishment = innovation and success

The place can attract the people who connect and add energy and skills to an idea or endeavor. I see this in cities with strong brands, where they are unapologetically there for a purpose, and they attract those who want to contribute, join or benefit - Washington DC for political policy wonks, New York’s aspiring singers and dancers to Broadway, country music talent to Nashville and lovers of jazz, cuisine and gothic arts to New Orleans. I saw people who loved outdoor sports leave Ohio for Colorado and marvelled about how they were leaving cold and flat for cold and mountainous, but now I see it’s also a culture of mountain biking, skiing, hiking and adjacent camping, brewery, coffeehouse culture that we just didn’t have.?

Moving to pursue your dreams is a great reason to move. Moving for a job is still an acceptable reason to move from your ancestral home, particularly if the economic prospects are not optimistic. People will understand, and it can be a kind of freedom to begin a mostly-new life on your own.

But we can also just move because we want to. Because our values are quite suiting the place we are, or where that place seems to be headed. And with the talent market tipped in favor of jobseekers, and more options to work from where you’d like, you can be choosy about your next place.?

There is very little emphasis these days, particularly from Generation X workers, on longevity or loyalty to a job, but there is a lot more emphasis on hiring for fit. A work culture can sometimes be a substitute for real community, but community is where you can find resiliency, and your town that won’t lay you off on a Friday afternoon. (No! Never do this! Bad company.)

I love this quote from the author, as I work on consulting about workplace culture change.

“We’re expecting too much of our workplaces. We’re looking for happiness or wholeness by way of profession, people and purpose and an office just can’t bear up under the weight to provide it all -- a community, on the other hand, may be able to.”??

• Profession: liking the work you do
• People: respected and valued at work, connected
• Purpose: meaningful impact, aligns with their values

So, moving to do work you like, with people you respect and a purpose that you value -- great! But remember that where you are may shape the whole of your career, not just this next step. It may be the place you meet your start-up business partner, where your kids go to school and love it, where you take up kitesurfing or coopering….place matters.?

I have written before about “The Triangle of Your Twenties” where you try to balance three aspects of your life: career, place, romance. I see in retrospect, in my forties, that place is the most overlooked, and Warnick makes a great case for how you should carefully prepare for this choice, as well as the others.?

Next Up: Chapter 4: All the Towns Want You