The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter and How to Make the Most of Them Now

Most of the book is about identity, work and love in the twenties. One chapter is why it appears in Management Craft.

• The people who change your situation are mostly the ones you barely know. Jay retells Mark Granovetter’s Boston study: “more than three-quarters of new jobs had come from leads from contacts who were seen only ‘occasionally’ or ‘rarely’” [1]. Her definition is broad and worth holding onto — weak ties are “people we have met—or are connected to somehow—but do not currently know well” [1].
• Your close circle is the supportive one, not the useful one. “While the urban tribe may be the most supportive figures in our twenties, they are not the most transformative” [1]. Support and reach are different goods, and people reliably confuse them.
• The Ben Franklin effect, stated plainly: “when we do something nice for someone we tend to like that person even more afterward—and this may lead to another favor down the line” [1].
• Jay’s contribution is the question underneath it. “How did Franklin get that first favor? Why would a person I don’t know well—a weak tie, that is—help me in the first place?” [1] The effect is usually cited for the second favour; the first one is the part you have to engineer.
• The engineering is specificity. Franklin “presented himself as a serious person with a need that matched what the man had to offer. He made himself interesting. He made himself relevant. And he asked for a clearly defined and easily deliverable favor: the use of a book” [1]. The failure mode is the opposite: Jay notes Franklin knew a vague overture “would seem dangerously vague to a busy professional” [1], and gives the modern form — an email whose subject line is “Coffee???” She followed her own account. “I didn’t ask my colleague how to write a book proposal; I asked if I could take a look at hers” [1]. The small, bounded, answerable ask is the whole technique.

• You need to reach someone for a Calibration Call and you don’t know them. Without this chapter, the ask is an open-ended request for the person’s time, which is the most expensive thing you can ask for. Jay’s Franklin reading says do the research first, show the match, and make the request small and clearly bounded.
• You are working your network for routing and keep going back to the same five people. Without this chapter, the close circle feels like the obvious place to start, because those are the people who will answer. Granovetter’s finding, as Jay tells it, says the leads live one ring further out.
• You are choosing between an email and a favour. The Ben Franklin effect suggests a small granted favour buys more goodwill than a polite non-request, which is a counterintuitive thing to remember when you are trying not to impose.