In an interview with Bloomberg on Wednesday, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said that every job will feel the effects of AI—including bankers.
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Teaching undergraduates gives you a different perspective on things. For many, they see their life already laid out: An analyst position at a prestigious bank or consulting firm after graduation, then graduate school and a string of impressive jobs at…
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Meetings multiply. Decisions get relitigated endlessly. The choices that eventually emerge are often so cautious they accomplish almost nothing.
The problem isn…
I work in front of a screen. And I’ve been thinking about how AI will change my work. What does it even mean for my future? It’s completely normal to wonder about this. Most people are convinced artificial intelligence is a threat to their caree…
I’ve never been good at asking people for help. Then I lost my job, decided to start a solo business the next day, and needed clients . . . fast. I turned to my network to ask for both referrals and recommendations to jump-start my business.
Asking for referrals is uncomfortable. Most solopreneurs would rather wait for business to come to them than put someone on the spot. But referrals are one of the most effective ways to grow a solo business. A warm introduction from someone who knows your work carries more weight than any cold pitch or LinkedIn message. Now, a few years later, most of my business comes from referrals.
The trick is knowing who to ask, when to ask, and how to make it easy for the other person to say yes.
Who to ask
You probably have more people in your network who could refer you than you think. A few starting points:
- Former colleagues from your 9 to 5. People who’ve worked alongside you know how you operate. They’ve seen your work ethic, your communication style, and the quality of what you produce.
- People in your professional network. This might be someone from a Slack community, a conference connection, or a fellow solopreneur. They don’t need to have been your client—they just need to be familiar enough with what you do to pass your name along.
- Past and current clients. A client who’s happy with your work is your strongest referral source. They can speak to specific results and how you work as a collaborative partner.
Because I’m really active on LinkedIn, I’ve had people refer me who’ve never worked with me directly. They simply know the kind of work I do, and trust that I get it done. Referrals don’t have to come from your direct connections if you put yourself out there.
When to ask
Timing matters, a lot. A well-timed request feels natural (and a poorly timed one feels transactional).
- When you first go solo. Reach out to your network early. People are generally willing to help when they know you’re making a career transition, and a simple “I’m now taking on clients” message can open doors for you.
- When a project goes well. The end of a successful engagement is a natural moment to ask. The client is happy, and your work is fresh on their minds.
- When your primary contact moves on. If the person you worked with at a company takes a new role somewhere else, that’s a double opportunity. Ask for a referral about the work you’ve done together—and ask if their new company could use your services, too.
Keep the ask really low-pressure. Something like:
“Hey [name], I really enjoyed working with you on [project]. If you know anyone in your network who might benefit from similar work, I’d love an introduction.”
Don’t overlook recommendations
Sometimes a referral is a big ask. Your contact might not know someone who needs your services right now, or they might not be in a position to refer you. That doesn’t mean they can’t help you.
A recommendation—a written endorsement of your work—can be equally valuable. Ask clients or colleagues to add a recommendation to your LinkedIn profile. It takes them a few minutes, and it gives you something permanent and publicly visible.
Once you have the LinkedIn recommendation, repurpose it. Pull the text into your website, include snippets in your proposals, or reference it when pitching new clients. A strong recommendation from a real person builds trust.
Whether it’s a referral or a recommendation, the underlying principles are the same: Do great work and make it easy for people to advocate for you.
I’ve always loved the anthropology of everyday objects, the ways a mundane thing, when you look closely enough, turns out to be a repository of invisible intelligence. So when I was listening to a recent episode of The Wirecutter podcast and learned that plain dish soap mixed with water is often more effective than a cabinet full of specialized cleaners, I went down a rabbit hole that ended somewhere unexpected: a 1959 chemistry concept that reframes everything I believe about human collaboration.
The concept is called Sinner’s Circle, developed by German chemist Herbert Sinner. It holds that effective cleaning depends on four interdependent factors: chemistry, temperature, mechanics, and time. Adjust any one of them—increase the temperature, extend the time—and you can compensate for a deficit in another. They form a closed loop, a system in dynamic balance.
What struck me was this: The same four forces govern whether human collaboration cleans up or leaves a mess.
Chemistry: Start with the right molecule
In cleaning, chemistry means choosing the right detergent for the job. The reason dish soap works so well is elegantly simple: a surfactant, the active molecule in soap, is two-sided. One end adheres to oils, the other to water. It acts as a bridge, allowing what was previously incompatible to combine and be rinsed away together.
In collaboration, the equivalent of chemistry is the catalyst you introduce at the start of the process. Specifically, it’s the quality of the question you ask. A mediocre question produces mediocre engagement. But a generative question, like a surfactant, has two sides: It adheres to what people already know and simultaneously pulls them toward what they don’t yet understand. It creates the conditions for ideas to combine in ways they couldn’t before.
Before your next team session, ask yourself: Is my opening question two-sided? Does it honor expertise while creating productive friction with the unknown?
Temperature: Turn up the stakes
Heat is a catalyst for molecular activity. The higher the temperature, the more agitated the molecules become, and the more effectively grime loosens from a surface. Heat doesn’t do the cleaning itself; it accelerates everything else.
The human equivalent of temperature is stakes. For example, when a team knows they’re the underdog competing for a major bid, when survival is on the line, or when the mission genuinely matters, then people stop holding back. High stakes function as activation energy, forcing full presence and dissolving the polite, self-protective behaviors that keep collaboration shallow.
Some of the most generative collaboration I’ve witnessed has happened precisely when teams felt the heat: a startup going up against an entrenched incumbent or a nonprofit competing for a grant that would determine whether they could keep their doors open. The urgency didn’t distract them, it focused them.
Mechanics: Embrace creative abrasion
Mechanical action in cleaning is the scrubbing—that physical agitation that dislodges what chemistry and heat have already loosened. Without it, you’re just soaking.
In collaboration, mechanics is friction, the productive disagreement that Jerry Hirshberg, during his tenure at Nissan Design, famously called “creative abrasion.” The instinct of many leaders is to smooth friction away, to keep the meeting comfortable and conflict-free. But that’s the equivalent of soaking a greasy pan and hoping for the best.
Real collaboration requires some scrubbing. It requires team members who are willing to push back, to surface the uncomfortable assumption, to say “I think we’re solving the wrong problem.” The goal isn’t conflict for its own sake, it’s the agitation that reveals what’s actually stuck.
Time: Resist the shortcut
This is the factor we most reliably underestimate. In cleaning, time is what allows the other three elements to do their work. Cut it short and you’re just pushing the dirt around.
Collaboration has a similar arc. Most people initially believe, with some justification, that they’re faster and more effective working alone. Early-stage collaboration often feels inefficient, even maddening. Ideas conflict, priorities diverge, and progress seems so slow.
But over time, diverse collaborative teams consistently outperform solo contributors on complex problems. They produce more creative solutions, catch more errors, and build the kind of shared understanding that makes execution faster. Time is what converts the friction and chemistry into genuine output. Leaders who call collaboration a failure after one difficult meeting are like cooks who pull the pan off the heat before the water has had a chance to work.
Close the loop
What makes Sinner’s Circle powerful in chemistry and in organizational life is the interdependence of the four elements. Raise the stakes (temperature) without introducing a generative question (chemistry) and you get panic, not innovation. Allow plenty of time without any productive friction (mechanics) and you get groupthink. Each element compensates for and activates the others.
The next time a collaboration feels stuck, don’t reach for a fancier process or another team-building exercise. Instead, run a diagnostic: Is the opening question generative enough? Are the stakes legible to everyone in the room? Are you allowing for enough productive friction? And have you given it enough time?
Sometimes the most sophisticated solution is also the most elemental. A surfactant and some warm water. A good question, real stakes, healthy friction, and patience. Herbert Sinner figured it out in 1959. We’re still learning to apply it.
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“T…
