Community

Don’t work in community. Seriously. I never meant to become a community manager. Most of us didn’t. We fell into it sideways, like walking through the wrong door at a party and suddenly finding ourselves responsible for babysitting someone’s forgotten & drunk cousin.The job is a messy tapestry of contradictions. You'll build fences designed to be... See more

The size of the effect is astounding. Cross-class friendships are a better predictor of upward mobility than school quality, job availability, community cohesion or family structure. If these results are true, then we have largely ignored a powerful way to help people realise the American dream.

It seems to me that Don believed deep down that our worlds were worth decorating, and that doing so was a joyful act. “The people who use lawn ornaments are typically friendly because they’re decorating the outside of their house for someone else,” he once told an interviewer.

The great harmony of community isn’t when everyone has equal everything. It’s when responsibility, investment, stake, and trust are aligned. You want the people who are most invested, most trusted, and most accountable to be taking on more responsibility and more decisions. You want people to feel empowered to make decisions without everyone’s... See more